Sustainable production of active pharmaceutical ingredients – new Manuscript in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering

Chiral amino alcohols such as metaraminol offer a large field of application as active pharmaceutical ingredients, their precursors or as synthons for the fine chemicals industry. For the production of metaraminol, the application of an enzymatic cascade consisting of a carboligation and a transamination step is suitable, whereas so far only petroleum-based precursors have been used (see figure below).

In our new study, we successfully established a first demonstrator of a hybrid production process for more sustainable biosynthesis of metaraminol by specifically combining metabolic engineering, bioprocess development and biocatalysis. Our paper demonstrates the fundamental feasibility of biocatalytic conversions in complex, microbial fermentation matrices and discusses in detail various challenges in integrating novel biobased hybrid processes to produce high-value compounds.

Reference:

Mohamed Labib, Laura Grabowski, Christian Brüsseler, Nicolai Kallscheuer, Luisa Wachtendonk, Thomas Fuchs, Andreas Jupke, Wolfgang Wiechert, Jan Marienhagen, Dörte Rother, and Stephan Noack: Toward the Sustainable Production of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient Metaraminol. ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.1c08275