Development of Scalable Processes with Underutilized Biocatalyst Classes

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.