Biocatalysis has the potential to transform how process chemists make molecules, both in terms of improving existing routes to be more sustainable, and to enable shorter new routes via transformations not feasible using chemical methods. A recent review by a team at Pfizer (S.P. France et. al. JACS Au 2023, 3, 715-735) gives an excellent

I recall back in the late 1980’s, working for Smith Kline and French, reading a couple of articles in Tet. Letts. on biotransformations. I was intrigued, and a bit sceptical, that such transformations with enzymes would take place and lead to efficient large-scale processes. I had no experience or training in this area. My degree

Dr John Studley (JS) spoke to Heather Johnson (HJ) from Merck ahead of Heather’s presentation at our Organic Process Research & Development Conference. JS – The Science paper describing the design of a biocatalytic cascade for the manufacture of Islatravir (Science 2019, 366, 1255,) published by Merck and Codexis at the end of last year, represents

Dr John Studley (JS) from Scientific Update spoke to Dr David Barnes (DB) from Abbvie in the US  ahead of our ‘Organic Process Research and Development’ Conference which is taking place in Clearwater, Florida on 9-11 March. We are looking forward to your presentation ‘Discovery of Novel Catalytic Technologies in the Development of Complex Clinical

We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Iwona Kaluzna, Sales and Marketing Director at InnoSyn to learn about the key challenges and most exciting research areas in biocatalysis. Read the blog article by Laura Elizabeth Lansdowne, Senior Science Writer & Editor, Technology Networks: Link to article: Advances in Industrial Biocatalysis Iwona is presenting at

Nature has had many generations to optimise its catalytic processes. As a result they are both extremely efficient and exquisitely selective. Biocatalysis is now very much a mainstay of industrial organic synthesis, particularly with the advent of protein engineering and directed evolution enabling the preparation of robust enzymes fine-tuned to a particular substrate. The importance

Dr John Studley, Science Director at Scientific Update and Dr William Goundry from Astra Zeneca got together ahead of our forthcoming Organic Process R&D Conference in Lisbon, Portugal on 23-25 September. Q: Dr John Studley (JS) We are looking forward to your presentation ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly! Successes and Failures from the

One of the challenges associated with biocatalysis is the resulting stereochemistry is not always easy to predict and more often than not gives the unwanted isomer. The problem is compounded if the substrate has limited steric or electronic components to aid stereocontrol. A way around this problem is to engineer the wildtype protein. A resent

Francis Arnold and her group have published a series of papers using modified Cytochrome P450 enzymes to cyclopropanate olefins with diazo esters1.  More recently they have used a related system to create chiral carbon-silicon bonds2. P.S. Coelho, E.M. Brustad, A. Kannan, and F.H. Arnold et al, Science, 2013, 339, 307-310; Z.J. Wang, H. Ranata, N.E.

Considering the environmental footprint of a typical pharmaceutical / agrochemical process, 60-80% arises from the use of solvents.  Good solvent selection and use – can be the biggest positive hit on improving the sustainability of a process. The timely identification of an optimum chemical route can save you time and money.  An efficient route, selected