Reactions Systems Pfizer

A summary of the industrial-scale process development for the nitrilase-catalyzed [93] route to ethyl (/ )-4-cyano-3-hydroxy-butyrate, an intermediate in the synthesis of Atorvastatin (Pfizer Lipitor) from epichlorohydrin via 3-hydroxyglutaronitrile (3-HGN) was recently reported (Figure 8.15) [94], The reaction conditions were further optimized to operate at 3 m (330 gL ) substrate, pH 7.5 and 27 °C. Under these conditions, 100% conversion and product ee of 99% was obtained in 16 h reaction time with a crude enzyme loading of 6% (based on total protein, 0.1 U mg-1). It is noted that at pH < 6.0 the reaction stalled at <50% conversion and at alkaline pH a slowing in reaction rate was observed. Since the starting material is of low cost and the nitrilase can be effectively expressed in the Pfenex (Pseudomonas) expression system at low cost, introduction of the critical stereogenic center... 

Bromonitromethane is a key starting material for the preparation of the broad-spectrum antibiotic trovafloxacin (10), which contains the interesting 3-azabicy-clo[3.1.0]hexane ring system. Pfizer chemists found that the base-catalyzed reaction of bromonitromethane with N-benzylmaleimide efficiently assembled the key bicyclic adduct 11 in high yield and with the required exo stereochemistry [14]. The exo addition product 11 could then be converted (Scheme 11.8) to trovafloxacin (10) [15]. 

Sertraline (16) is an antidepressant that inhibits the uptake of serotonin in the central nervous system.148 It is marketed by Pfizer under the name Zoloft.149 One methodology that can be used relies on an asymmetric reduction (see also Chapter 16) (Scheme 31.11).150-156 The lactone can be used as a chiral starting material for the Friedel-Crafts reaction. The established stereogenic center in the tetralone controls the reduction of the imine.157 The alternative is a resolution approach (Scheme 31.12).148-153-158-161... 

The major commercially available reaction indexing programs are REACCS (Molecular Design Limited), SYNLIB (started by Clark Still, developed by Smith, Kline and French and now sold by Dan Chodosh), ORAC (developed at the University of Leeds) and DARC-RMS (Telelsystemes). Pfizer s in-house system CONTRAST is noteworthy but is not available outside Pfizer. The release of CASREACT by Chemical Abstracts is awaited with interest. 

The concept of molecular similarity calculation within chemical information systems was pioneered at Sheffield University and first introduced into operational systems at Pfizer Central Research (UK) " and Lederle . It is now well-established within chemical information systems, both commercially available and developed in-house, as described in other papers in this volume. It is a powerful concept, which may be applied to both 2-D and 3-D structural representations, and to chemical reaction information, and used to support similarity searching and browsing, and file clustering and partitioning. 

The systems reported above all rely on detection by ultraviolet absorbance, and require some separate means of identifying the desired product among the various components (and thus collected fractions) of the reaction mixture. Efficiency and throughput can be considerably enhanced by real-time detection and identification of products. Two groups have now reported preparative HPLC systems where fractionation decisions are based upon output from a mass spectrometer detector. The first preliminary report of such a system came from a collaboration between CombiChem and Sciex [21]. This system bases fractionation decisions on the output of a single ion mass chromatogram for the predicted molecular ion of the desired product. Reverse phase preparative HPLC is used in conjunction with electrospray ionization mass detection. A full report of this work has appeared in early 1998 [22]. The second report of such a system came from a collaboration between Pfizer and Micromass [23]. This system uses a flexible combination of UV and/or ion chromatograms to control fractionation. Unlike other systems, fractionation parameters are set by the mass spectrometer control software. Variants of both of the above systems will probably become commercially available in late 1997 [24]. 

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