Development of sustainable and efficient tailor-made processes for pharma and food applications

The combination of two enabling technologies, such as flow chemistry and biocatalysis, is a key strategy for the development of sustainable and scalable processes to obtain biologically active compounds for food and pharma applications, minimizing the ecological burden. This strategy allows to exploit the remarkable advantages associated with the continuous synthesis, i.e., better mass transfer, temperature control and mixing efficiency, the possibility to insert in-line analysis and purification steps, in combination with the mild operational conditions required by biocatalysts together with their high chemo- regio- and stereo-selectivity.1 The main focus of this project was to display how versatile and tunable the combination of biocatalysis and flow chemistry could be for the synthesis of different biologically active compounds, improving established classic but polluting chemical approaches or clearing the way for larger scale manufacturing. Three main biocatalyzed reactions that have been explored: i) reactions of functional group transfer (from one molecule to another), ii) redox reactions and iii) condensation reactions for the synthesis of different functional groups (i.e., esters, carbonate, carbamate). In some cases, a combination of more than one biocatalyst was used in the same protocol to perform further modifications of the high value chemicals obtained. To further improve the environmental benignity of the procedures, when possible, classical organic solvents were replaced by greener options, i.e., solvents derived from renewable sources and new solvent systems like natural deep eutectic solvents (NADESs). Moreover, in-line purification procedures have been designed to obtain the desired compounds without the need of additional purification steps.2-5