Scalable and sustainable synthesis of chiral amines by biocatalysis
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Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
In recent years, industrial biocatalysis has significantly advanced, largely due to innovations in DNA sequencing, bioinformatics, and protein engineering. However, the challenge of implementing biocatalysis at an industrial scale while ensuring sustainability and cost-effectiveness remains a critical barrier. This study presents the development of a flash thermal racemization protocol for chemoenzymatic dynamic kinetic resolution (FTR-CE-DKR) of chiral amines, encompassing an investigation of substrate scope, catalyst screening, and optimization studies. The outcomes of this research facilitated the successful scale-up of an industrially relevant amide within a recycle-batch platform, achieving unprecedented scales of up to 100 grams and space-time yield (STY) values of up to 73.2 g L⁻¹ h⁻¹. Furthermore, the process exhibited very favorable sustainability metrics when benchmarked against previous reports, including atom economy, reaction mass efficiency, and process mass intensity. These findings represent a significant milestone in the biocatalytic production of optically active amines.
Date Issued
2025-12-12
Date Acceptance
2025-10-28
Citation
Communications Chemistry, 2025, 8
ISSN
2399-3669
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Journal / Book Title
Communications Chemistry
Volume
8
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/41388079
PII: 10.1038/s42004-025-01783-w
Subjects
ALCOHOLS
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
England
Article Number
403
Date Publish Online
2025-12-12