A Green approach towards the synthesis of chiral alcohols using functionalized alginate immobilized Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells

The stereochemistry of the drug molecule is gaining greater therapeutic importance and thus much attention was drawn in synthesis of chiral compounds by the pharmaceutical industry. In this study Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells immobilized on functionalized alginate beads, catalyze the bio-reduction of prochiral ketones 1a–12a to their corresponding chiral alcohols 1b–12b in higher yields of 60–99% and.excellent optical purity 75–97%. The synthesized chiral azido alcohols 10b-12b were further subjected to hydrogenation using Palladium(Pd) nanoparticles (≤5 nm), to obtain chiral amino alcohols 10c–12c of therapeutic importance. Thus, a simple, green and inexpensive continuous chemo-enzymatic process has been developed in the synthesis of chiral alcohols/amino alcohols to enhance the scope of the methodology towards industrial application.