Pharmaceutical industry characteristics chemical process

Because chemistry is such a broad field, it is difficult to give a concise job description of a chemist. In general, chemists study the composition, structure, and characteristics of matter in an attempt to improve substances and products discover new substances and products and improve and develop chemical processes. Chemists work in a multitude of industries including agriculture, medicine, pharmaceuticals, textiles, petrochemicals, mining, plastics, hazardous materials, electronics, adhesives, paints, household products, and cosmetics. 

Ciystallization has been the most important separation and purification process in the pharmaceutical industry throughout its history. Many parallels exist in the fine chemicals industry as well. Over the past several decades the study of crystallization operations has taken on even higher levels of importance because of several critical factors that require increased control of the crystallization process. These levels of control require better understanding of the fundamentals as well as of the operating characteristics of crystallization equipment, including the critical issue of scale-up. 

Enzymes are by no means ideal process catalysts, but their extremely high specificity and activity under moderate conditions are prominent characteristics that are being increasingly appreciated by different production sectors, among which the pharmaceutical and fine-chemical industry (Schmid et al. 2001 Thomas et al. 2002 Zhao et al. 2002 Bruggink et al. 2003) have added to the more traditional sectors of food (Hultin 1983) and detergents (Maurer 2004). 

Aldolases are a group of C—C bond forming enzymes with widespread applications. The stereoselective aldol addition reaction catalyzed by aldolases represents an attractive alternative to conventional chiral organic chemistry methods for chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Aldolases are classified according to both their proposed catalytic mechanism and the structure of the donor substrate, their sources and microbial production processes being presented in this chapter. To design appropriate bioreactors for aldol synthesis, the characteristics of aldolase biocatalysts obtained after purification procedures in free and immobilized form are discussed. 

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