Highlights of the Recent Patent Literature─Focus on Biocatalysis Innovation

Abstract

This review surveys recent advances in biocatalysis, with a primary focus on contributions from the patent literature since 2018, including reductive aminations, nitro reductions, amidations, carbon–carbon bond formation catalyzed by lipases and aldolases, and cascade biocatalysis. Examples of processes that have been designed and developed for the industrial preparation of pharmaceutical intermediates are highlighted.

Photobiocatalytic Strategies for Organic Synthesis

“…Enzymes are attractive catalysts for chemical synthesis because they carry out transformations with unparalleled catalytic efficiencies and reaction selectivity. 1−3 The advent of sophisticated techniques for generating mutant libraries and advances in analytical chemistry has accelerated protein engineering to the point where biocatalysts are now considered competitive alternatives to traditional small molecule catalysts, 4,5 leading to their increased use in the chemical manufacturing of pharmaceuticals. 6−10 An ongoing goal in the field has been to identify new activation modes that would enable enzymes to catalyze new types of reactions.…”

The Evolving Nature of Biocatalysis in Pharmaceutical Research and Development

“…This perspective specifically aims to focus on recent key examples of implementation of biocatalysis for scalable syntheses of pharmaceutical intermediates. Several excellent reviews have been published on industrial biocatalysis covering various aspects of enzymatic transformations for drug development. ,,− As such, this perspective does not aim to be comprehensive but rather highlight the current state-of-the-art of preparative enzymatic synthesis in an industrial setting. Therefore, the use of biocatalysis for small-scale pharmaceutical metabolite synthesis, lead diversification, ,,, bioconjugation, and selective protein modification − will not be focused upon in this article.…”

Crosslinked Aggregates of Fusion Enzymes in Microaqueous Organic Media

“…Enzymatic processes have shown great potential for the sustainable production of chemicals, fulfilling most of the principles of green chemistry [1–3] . Plenty of biocatalytic processes can be found in the pharmaceutical and fine industries, especially in obtaining active pharmaceutical intermediates (APIs) [4–6] . Among various biotransformations, the oxygenation reactions inter‐cooperating molecular oxygen (O 2 ) to generate value‐added chemicals have been of great interest in the biocatalysis community [7–9] .…”

“…[1][2][3] Plenty of biocatalytic processes can be found in the pharmaceutical and fine industries, especially in obtaining active pharmaceutical intermediates (APIs). [4][5][6] Among various biotransformations, the oxygenation reactions inter-cooperating molecular oxygen (O 2 ) to generate value-added chemicals have been of great interest in the biocatalysis community. [7][8][9] In this context, Baeyer-Villiger monooxygenases (BVMOs) are known to catalyze the regio-and enantioselective Baeyer-Villiger oxidations and sulfoxidations for the synthesis of a wide range of products, including bioactive compounds or chiral precursors.…”