Medicines are essential to human health but can also
impact the
aquatic and terrestrial environment after use by patients and release
via excreta into wastewater. We highlight the need for a GREENER approach
to identify and meet important environmental criteria, which will
help reduce the impact of medicinal residues on the environment. These
criteria include effect reduction by avoiding nontarget effects or
undesirable moieties, exposure reduction via lower emissions or environmental
(bio)degradability, no PBT (persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic)
substances, and risk mitigation. With all of these criteria, however,
patient health is of primary importance as medicines are required
to be safe and efficacious for treating diseases. We discuss the feasibility
of including these criteria for green by design active pharmaceutical
ingredients in the process of drug discovery and development and which
tools or assays are needed to accomplish this. The integrated GREENER
approach can be used to accelerate discussions about future innovations
in drug discovery and development.
Active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), their metabolites and transformation products (TPs) occur globally in the environment. They risk the environmental and human health. These alarming circumstances highlight the strong need for...
To avoid adverse
side effects of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and
their transformation products (TPs) in the environment, substances
should be designed to fully mineralize in the environment at their
end-of-life while ensuring a degree of stability as needed for their
application. These considerations should be implemented at the very
beginning of chemical’s and pharmaceutical’s design
(Benign by Design, BbD) to meet requirements set by planetary boundaries
and upcoming legal frameworks (e.g., “Chemicals Strategy for
Sustainability towards a Toxic-Free Environment” by the European
Commission (EC)). In silico tools are already being
implemented in the drug discovery process and the assessment of chemicals
and pharmaceuticals. The advantage of which is avoiding or at least
minimizing animal testing and chemical waste due to experimental testing
as well as reducing the time to market. However, in the literature,
there are just a few examples of how in silico tools
could be implemented in the BbD process. Therefore, this study suggests
a workflow supporting practitioners designing new environmentally
mineralizing chemicals and pharmaceuticals. This would also result
in a much faster and less expensive process than starting with repetitive
synthesis and subsequent experimental testing to improve the compounds’
properties.
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