Industrially Relevant Enzyme Cascades for Drug Synthesis and Their Ecological Assessment

Environmentally friendly and sustainable processes for the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) gain increasing attention. Biocatalytic synthesis routes with enzyme cascades support many stated green production principles, for example, the reduced need for solvents or the biodegradability of enzymes. Multi-enzyme reactions have even more advantages such as the shift of the equilibrium towards the product side, no intermediate isolation, and the synthesis of complex molecules in one reaction pot. Despite the intriguing benefits, only a few enzyme cascades have been applied in the pharmaceutical industry so far. However, several new enzyme cascades are currently being developed in research that could be of great importance to the pharmaceutical industry. Here, we present multi-enzymatic reactions for API synthesis that are close to an industrial application. Their performances are comparable or exceed their chemical counterparts. A few enzyme cascades that are still in development are also introduced in this review. Economic and ecological considerations are made for some example cascades to assess their environmental friendliness and applicability.