Process engineering tools to guide implementation and scale-up of transaminase cascades

Biocatalysis is gaining ground in the pharmaceutical and fine chemical industry as a selective and potentially green technology to help synthesize industrially interesting products. In particular in the last decade the application of transaminases (E.C. 2.6.1.X ) has gained particular attention as a means to synthesize optically pure chiral amines from prochiral ketones using an amine donor. Chiral amines can also be synthesized by other routes but the importance of the compounds mean that a variety of routes will be required to cover the synthesis of many different chiral amines of different properties and values.