Lonza: Biotechnology – A Key Ingredient for Success in the Future

Abstract

Lonza began as a small Swiss electricity company and it has successfully adapted to change throughout its history to become a global custom manufacturing company serving the needs of the life-science industry. One of the crucial decisions and changes in its development was the implementation of biotechnology. This article outlines briefly the history of change during Lonza's development, some of the problems that confronted the chemical industry approximately a decade ago and how they affected the area of biotransformation. There are still many chemical reactions that are difficult, inefficient and environmentally unfriendly. Lonza believes that some of these problems can be solved by biotechnology if the biocatalytic platform can be widened and improved so that the biocatalysts can be easily integrated into a chemical process.

Enzyme-mediated oxidations for the chemist

“…Particularly, nicotinic acid dehydrogenases are worth mentioning here as they have found industrial application, for example, for the synthesis of 5-hydroxypyrazinecarboxylic acid, 6-hydroxypicolinic acid and 6-hydroxynicotinic acid. [634][635][636][637][638][639][640] As suggested by the nomenclature, the nicotinic acid dehydrogenase-catalyzed hydroxylation does not involve reductive activation of molecular oxygen, thereby representing an interesting alternative mechanism. Indeed, NADP +dependent water incorporation could be demonstrated by isotope labeling.…”

Sustainability and Biotechnology

“…Besides the technological needs and quality constraints, it is the time frame given by drug development which makes the application of biotechnology for small-molecule pharmaceuticals and intermediates particularly demanding due to an inadequate toolbox . Skimming through published data where priorities have been formulated by the industry for the use of biocatalysis, one can come-up with the following wish list − shown in Table .…”

Industrial biotechnology—the future of green chemistry?

“…The reason for the limited use is the narrow substrate range along with the poor water solubility of the substrates. 56 Only a few examples exist using these hydrolytic enzymes for the synthesis of amides, mainly in the antibiotic sector. More often, amidases/acylases and peptidases are used for hydrolysis of amides with the aim of producing enantiomerically pure amides by kinetic resolution.…”

“…Nevertheless, there are only a limited number of biocatalytic routes using enzymes for the synthesis of amides on an industrial scale. There is still a need for improving disadvantages like the narrow substrate range, solubility problems, 56 high price of biocatalysts and high isolation costs by which these methods often become uneconomic. 54…”