Over the past few decades, biocatalysis
has become a significant
contributor to the manufacture of complex active pharmaceutical ingredients
(APIs), agrochemicals, and commodity chemicals. In the context of
API synthesis, the biocatalysis community has long relied on three
predominant catalyst classes: lipases, ketoreductases, and transaminases.
While reactions catalyzed by these enzymes can enable amazing new
synthetic routes to the desired compounds, numerous additional enzymatic
transformations remain that are not as routinely implemented in process
chemistry. Here we discuss a few enzyme classes that are beginning
to see increased use in process chemistry and not only highlight the
key transformations catalyzed but also take a deeper dive in to how
scalable, robust, and cost-effective processes were developed. Aggregate
learnings from these case studies will highlight techniques used to
bring new catalysts to process scale and, ideally, spark interest
developing additional biocatalyst classes to execute scalable biotransformations.