Life industrial-scale synthesis

Lonza is a major custom manufacturer of intermediates for the life science industries, and uses biocatalysis in many of its processes. Some of the products for which a biotransformation is used are achiral, however, an important characteristic of enzymes is their chirality, and this characteristic is used by Lonza to produce a number of chiral synthons. Biotransformations for the synthesis of asymmetric compounds can be divided into two types of reactions those where an achiral precursor is converted into a chiral product (true asymmetric synthesis) and those involving the resolution of a racemic mixture. Both types of reaction are used at Lonza, and several examples of each type of reaction are described for large-scale syntheses of chiral molecules that use a biotransformation in one or more of the steps. 

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