Green Chemistry Workshops

Wednesday, October 19, 8:30 AM – 12:00 PM, Room 209-A/B 

Dr. Juan Colberg, Pharmaceutical Sciences Small Molecules, WRDM, Pfizer Inc.

Green Chemistry Workshop

This workshop will be focusing on education on, green innovation, the use of safer chemistry, greener processes, and cost savings. In this workshop we will have presentations on various topics involving the application of green chemistry in the development drugs. The workshop will include breakout sessions to give participants the opportunity to apply their knowledge of green chemistry in case studies.

The format of the workshop in addition to discussion on the  basic application of the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry, will also include applications of novel, greener technologies of interest to the Pharma and Chemical Industry. Among the technologies to be discussed are:

Biocatalysis: The use of enzymes in drug manufacturing has seen resurgence in recent years thanks to enzyme engineering, resulting in highly-active and versatile biocatalysts that enable highly efficient processes. In addition, due to the chiral nature of enzymes, these catalysts are particularly well-suited for the generation of chiral centers in the products, which is of special interest in the pharmaceutical industry. Several examples will be discussed.

Flow chemistry: Most of the current processes under development or at the commercial stage in the pharmaceutical industry are run in batch mode. One reason for this is familiarity – process chemists are more familiar with batch processing and the large investment made over years in the existing batch process infrastructure at pharmaceutical plants. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that processes on flow have many advantages over batch mode, including improved safety when dealing with unstable reagents, smaller investments in equipment, lower solvent consumption, and efficient heat removal from exothermic reactions. The pharmaceutical industry and academic institutions are investing heavily in this technology to manufacture drugs “on-demand” and reduce cost, in addition to improve carbon footprint. Introduction of this area and applications to Pharma will be discussed. 

Catalysis using non-precious metals: Catalysis is one of the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry and is frequently used in the synthesis of drug candidates. Unfortunately, most of the metals currently used in catalysis are precious metals, such as palladium, iridium, rhodium, platinum, and ruthenium. Besides cost, a concern related to the use of these metals is their toxicity, which requires extensive purification protocol to bring levels down to acceptable values with the concomitant increase in waste, as well as their long-term supply due to their scarcity in the Earth’s crust.

The Pharma Industry has embarked in ambitious programs to replace those precious metals with more sustainable alternatives, such as iron, nickel and copper. These three metals are abundant, inexpensive, and display lower toxicity than precious metal catalysts, which contribute to turning catalysis into an even more attractive technology for the synthesis of drug candidates. Discussions around success stories and future work will be included in this workshop.