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This Christmas, Santa isn’t bringing toys. He’s bringing the reagents every chemist secretly wants but never dares to touch. Diazomethane, fluorine, HF, phosgene, nitrogen triiodide… the stuff of legends, the stuff of nightmares.

From participating in the #PHARMECO consortium meeting in Graz to welcoming the PHARMECO team at our Microinnova site, we had the chance to connect, share progress, and dive deeper into the technologies driving the project. It was a pleasure to be visited by AbbVie, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, CPI, Universiteit Gent, Merck Gruppe, Pfizer, RCPE – Research Center Pharmaceutical Engineering GmbH, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Sanofi, Servier, UCB and Universität Graz.

🚀 Excited to share our new publication in Organic Process Research & Development! Cyclopropane rings are highly valuable in pharmaceuticals, but one of the main ways to make them, the Simmons–Smith reaction, has long been limited by safety concerns, handling of unstable intermediates, and labor-intensive purification steps.

Some reagents have a reputation for being “haunted”; toxic, unstable, or dangerously reactive. In traditional batch chemistry, these molecules send chills down a chemist’s spine. But in flow chemistry, there’s nothing to fear. Hazardous intermediates like azides, diazonium salts, peroxides, or fluorine can be operated under precise control and with superior heat and mass transfer. Flow turns spooky chemistry into safe, scalable reality, transforming what was once feared into a powerful advantage. This Halloween, don’t be afraid of your chemistry. Haunted molecules aren’t scary in flow.

Microinnova is proud to contribute to the TWIN4PHARMA initiative, led by the Research Center Pharmaceutical Engineering (RCPE). This COMET Module drives the digital and sustainable transformation of pharmaceutical process development, and the successful review of the first year marks a major milestone!

Harnessing liquified gases like ammonia or ethylene oxide in pharmaceutical manufacturing offers unique advantages; from faster reactions to greener processes, but also presents challenges in control and safety. Continuous flow technology provides the solution.

At zenonIZE 25, our team joined forces with COPA-DATA and industry peers to shape the future of process automation. From real-world MTP applications to hands-on interoperability testing, we explored how modular production can accelerate innovation, especially in pharma.