Evolving the Green Chemist’s Toolbox for APIs Manufacturing
Facing a highly competitive global market with increasing awareness on environmental issues, chemical production is making its way toward a paradigm shift to more efficient and more environmentally friendly manufacturing processes. In the pharmaceutical industry, where some remaining challenges still need to be addressed for small molecules APIs manufacturing, scientific advances in organic chemistry offer opportunities to drive a green-by-design approach. From a process chemist’s point of view sustainability entails the development of more efficient, effective and safer reactions. Across many industrial applications, chemical engineers and synthetic chemists have the opportunities to address today’s most important problems by innovating from the molecular to manufacturing scales.
In this article, we wish to highlight some recent developments for implementing more sustainable processes in the field of photochemistry, flow chemistry, and biocatalysis. Smarter process is also about process intensification and combining technologies, such as flow chemistry with photochemistry or biocatalysis.
After an introduction on the context and challenges for delivering more sustainable APIs process manufacturing, we will review some key technologies that are already demonstrating the environmental footprint reduction. To provide a practical understanding, we will present three case studies illustrating the elaboration of process strategies—from route synthesis to industrial scale—with the ultimate goal of delivering comprehensive and sustainable process solutions.
