Designing for sustainability with biocatalytic and chemoenzymatic cascade processes

Cascade reactions have been widely recognized to cut costs, decrease solvent usage, and reduce cycle times in chemical processes. Recently, biocatalytic cascades have altered how we design synthetic routes to complex molecules to achieve sustainable commercial processes for pharmaceutical, agri-cultural, and fine chemical industries. With advancements in protein engineering and an increase in the number of enzyme classes available to chemists, industrial and academic groups alike have endeavored to expand the scope of biocatalysis from single reactions to multi-enzyme cascades to rapidly build complex molecular structures. Recent reports have drawn inspiration from biosynthetic pathways and have applied engineered enzymes to in vitro enzymatic cascades. Fur ther-more, combining transition-metal catalysis and enzymes in one-pot chemoenzymatic cascades likewise serves to broaden the scope of biocatalysis, enabling traditional chemical re-actions to be performed under mild aqueous conditions. In this article, we review recent biocatalytic and chemoenzymatic cascades from 2019 to 2021.

Automated summary

Cascade reactions are recognized for their cost-cutting benefits, decreased solvent usage, and reduced cycle times in chemical processes. Biocatalytic and chemoenzymatic cascades have emerged as a sustainable approach for synthesizing complex molecules, with potential applications in pharmaceutical, agricultural, and fine chemical industries.