Nonenzymatic and Biocatalytic Transformations

The yields and ee values were significantly higher in the biocatalytic processes, whereas the nonenzymatic reductions needed substantially lower amounts of substrates (cofactor, buffer, cosubstrate) because only hydrogen was used as a 

The continuous enzymatic process generates the desired enantiopure product with a high space-time yield (560 g L d ) using a membrane reactor. The synthesis not only reduced the costs significantly at large scale but it can also be used to 

Several other studies dedicated to the comparison of biocatalytic and nonenzymatic transformations have been published [56-58]. The major aspect can be summarized as follows if high substrate and product concentration can be reached using low-priced substrates, this will result in an advantage for biocatalytic methods relative to nonenzymatic processes, at least if highly enantioenriched products are needed. 

Some Special Aspects of Biocataiysts, Recent Developments 

The examples given in Section 4.2 demonstrate that state-of-the-art biocatalytic transformations have reached an extraordinary level making them valuable and competitive methods for use in the pharmaceutical industry. Progress made in the fields of chemoenzymatic synthesis, molecular biology and reaction engineering will improve and enlarge the possible apphcations of biocataiysts even further. 

---