Pharmaceutical industry perspectives on flow chemocatalysis and biocatalysis

“In response to a growing demand for more sustainable and cost-effective synthetic processes, the pharmaceutical industry is increasingly relying on continuous manufacturing as a valuable alternative to conventional batch processing. Particularly, flow processing may enable process intensification of chemocatalytic and biocatalytic transformations, both being of strategic importance on the design and production of active pharmaceutical ingredients. This review outlines the current status of flow chemocatalysis and biocatalysis within the pharmaceutical landscape. Furthermore, the trends and challenges that these technologies face are highlighted, based on recently disclosed applications from industry and innovative solutions from academia.”

Highlights:

• “Nevertheless, long-term operational stability of immobilized biocatalysts may also be improved by advances in reactor engineering, which enable reproducibility and reusability at scale [45,46].”

• [45] Pithani S., Karlsson S., Emtenäs H., Öberg C.T.: Using spinchem rotating bed reactor technology for immobilized enzymatic reactions: a case study. Org. Process Res. Dev., 2019, 23, pp. 1926–1931. // [46] Sheldon R.A., Pereira P.C.: Biocatalysis engineering: the big picture. Chem. Soc. Rev., 2019, 23, pp. 2678-2691.