Combined chemo-bio-catalytic one-pot fine-chemical conversions

June 2002

Presentation at CatCon 2002, Houston, Texas USA, June 3-4, 2002

By Rob Schoevaart and Tom Kieboom
Industrial Fermentative Chemistry, Leiden Institute of Chemistry, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands and DSM Food Specialties R&D, Delft, The Netherlands

Combined chemo-bio-catalytic one-pot approaches have potential power for fine chemical conversions by avoiding recovery steps, organic solvents or stoeihiometric amounts of reagents, i.e. diminishing waste and energy.
The general strategy is the transfer of traditional organic synthesis routes towards the cellular way of multi-step synthesis, i.e. Nature's way of combined bio-catalytic reactions expanded by Mankind's chemo-catalysis and clean chemistry.
The concept is demonstrated by a three-step one-pot conversion by the combined action of an enzyme, a homogeneous and a heterogeneous catalyst in water. In this way, consecutive oxidation (oxygen, galactose oxidase), dehydration (proline) and reduction (hydrogen, palladium metal) in water yields quantitatively a galactose-based synthon without the use of recovery steps, organic solvents or other reagents.

Back to the Publications & Presentations 2002 overview