New opportunities for biocatalysis: making pharmaceutical processes greener

The pharmaceutical industry requires synthetic routes to be environmentally compatible as well as to fulfill the demands of process economics and product specification and to continually reduce development times. Biocatalysis has the potential to deliver ‘greener’ chemical syntheses, and in this review some of these opportunities are outlined and outstanding challenges presented. Future development will require research targeted towards increased commercial availability of key enzymes, as well as the improvement of enzyme stability and substrate repertoire, to fully realize the potential of biocatalysis for making pharmaceutical processes greener.