In the past decades biocatalysis has developed from an interesting academic research area to a valuable synthetic tool for the large-scale production of bulk chemicals, pharmaceutical and agro intermediates1. As a leading company in the production of pharmaceutical intermediates, DSM has developed and brought to the plant more than 25 biocatalytic processes for the cost-effective manufacturing of homochiral compounds. In order to reduce development time and to further strengthen and expand our position in our key competence biocatalysis, the pro-active development of proprietary biocatalyst platforms is one of our key success factors. Recently, carbon-carbon bond forming enzymes like (R)- and (S)-hydroxynitrile lyases, threonine aldolases and 2-deoxy-D-ribose 5-phosphate aldolases (DERA) were added to our biocatalytic toolbox.At DSM DERA has been successfully applied in the enantioselective syntheses of several versatile chiral compounds on commercial scale. These compounds represent advanced intermediates for pharmaceuticals. The key step in their synthesis is the consecutive aldol reaction of an acceptor aldehyde with two molecules of acetaldehyde yielding a deoxy-sugar derivative catalyzed by DERA. In this step the complete carbon chain and two chiral centres are built up. The DERA reaction products can than further be reacted chemically to a large variety of chiral synthons.

Industrial enzymatic C-C bond formation

244th National Meeting (2012)

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