Biocatalytic reduction processes

Development of Sustainable Biocatalytic Reduction Processes for Organic Chemists... 

Figure 1.1 Biocatalytic reduction processes criteria like material costs, yields, and step and the optimization of the redox state changes combinations in one-pot reaction play a role in and the number of one-pot reaction steps over route selection, the synthetic sequence, whereby additional...

The use of organic solvents as reaction media for biocatalytic reactions can not only overcome the substrate solubility issue, but also facilitate the recovery of products and biocatalysts as well. This technique has been widely employed in the case of lipases, but scarcely applied for biocatalytic reduction processes, due to the rapid inactivation and poor stability of redox enzymes in organic solvents. Furthermore, all the advantages for nonaqueous biocatalysis can take effect only if the problem of cofactor dependence is also solved. Thus, bioreductions in micro- or nonaqueous organic media are generally restricted to those with substrate-coupled cofactor regeneration. 

Enantiometrically pure alcohols are important and valuable intermediates in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals and other fine chemicals. A variety of synthetic methods have been developed to obtain optically pure alcohols. Among these methods, a straightforward approach is the reduction of prochiral ketones to chiral alcohols. In this context, varieties of chiral metal complexes have been developed as catalysts in asymmetric ketone reductions [ 1-3]. However, in many cases, difficulties remain in the process operation, and in obtaining sufficient enantiomeric purity and productivity [2,3]. In addition, residual metal in the products originating from the metal catalyst presents another challenge because of the ever more stringent regulatory restrictions on the level of metals allowed in pharmaceutical products [4]. An alternative to the chemical asymmetric reduction processes is biocatalytic transformation, which offers... 

The biocatalytic reduction of carboxylic acids to their respective aldehydes or alcohols is a relatively new biocatalytic process with the potential to replace conventional chemical processes that use toxic metal catalysts and noxious reagents. An enzyme known as carboxylic acid reductase (Car) from Nocardia sp. NRRL 5646 was cloned into Escherichia coli BL21(DE3). This E. coli based biocatalyst grows faster, expresses Car, and produces fewer side products than Nocardia. Although the enzyme itself can be used in small-scale reactions, whole E. coli cells containing Car and the natural cofactors ATP and NADPH, are easily used to reduce a wide range of carboxylic acids, conceivably at any scale. The biocatalytic reduction of vanillic acid to the commercially valuable product vanillin is used to illustrate the ease and efficiency of the recombinant Car E. coli reduction system." A comprehensive overview is given in Reference 6, and experimental details below are taken primarily from Reference 7. 

Another example for biocatalytic reduction using glucose as the reductant, is the production of (R)-ethyl-4,4,4-trifluoro-3-hydroxybutanoate by Lonza [130]. It is a building block for pharmaceuticals such as Befloxatone, an anti-depressant monoamine oxidase-A inhibitor from Synthelabo. The process uses whole cells of Escheria coli that contain two plasmids. One carries an aldehyde reductase... 

Direct, nonmediated electrochemical reduction of NADIP)" " at modified electrode surfaces has been used to produce the en2ymatically active NAD(P)H and even to couple the NAD(P)H regeneration process with some biocatalytic reactions [228]. The modifier molecules used for these purposes are not redox active and they do not mediate the electron-transfer process between an electrode and NAD(P)+ however, they can effectively decrease the required overpotential and prevent formation of the nonenzymatically active dimer product [228]. For example, the efficiency of the direct electrochemical regeneration of NADH from NAD" " was enhanced by the use of a cholesterol-modified gold amalgam electrode that hinders the dimerization of the NAD-radicals on its modified-surface [228]. This direct electrochemical NAD+ reduction process was used favorably to drive an enzymatic reduction of pyruvate to D-lactate in the presence of lactate dehydrogenase. The turnover number for NAD" " was estimated as 1400 s k Other modifiers that enhance formation of the enzymatically active NAD(P)H include L-histidine [229] and benzimidazole [230], immobilized as monolayers on silver electrodes. CycKc voltammetric experiments demonstrated that these modified electrodes can catalyze the reduction of NAD+ to enzymatically active NADH at particularly low overpotentials. 

Figure 2.1 Overview of the different biocatalytic approaches for reductive processes treated in this book, together with the emerging cases reported in this chapter.

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