The Evolving Landscape of Industrial Biocatalysis in Perspective from the ACS Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Roundtable

Abstract

As the ACS Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Roundtable (GCIPR) approached its 20th anniversary, the Biocatalysis Focus Team surveyed its member companies to better understand how biocatalysis is currently being leveraged across their pipelines. This article presents an analysis of the dataset collected from pharmaceutical and agrochemical companies, highlighting the evolving biocatalysis landscape with expanding impact of enzyme catalysis driven by protein engineering. The increasing complexity of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) demands efficient and sustainable synthesis routes, prompting the pharmaceutical industry to adopt innovative methodologies. In this context, biocatalysis has emerged as a particularly attractive solution, as it enables streamlined syntheses under mild reaction conditions with intrinsically safer reaction profiles compared with conventional chemistry. Over the past two decades, numerous API manufacturing processes have integrated biocatalysis, leveraging a wide range of enzymes in early drug discovery and route scouting activities. Advances in directed evolution, computational tools, and adjacent technologies now allow for the rapid discovery and optimization, further expanding the use of biocatalysis in pharmaceutical manufacturing.