ABSTRACT
The Process Research and Development Department at Bristol-Myers Squibb includes a small enzyme technology group. Although the synthetic routes and processes developed for production of drug candidate compounds rely mainly on conventional chemistry, there are certain cases, particularly involving the production of chiral intermediates, where an enzymatic process may be advantageous. The application of enzymes in process development takes advantage of their enantioselectivity, regioselectivity, ease of scale-up, and reactivity near ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure. In this chapter, the development of processes for the production of chiral amino acid intermediates for an antihypertensive compound will be discussed in detail and an overview of some enzyme applications in the synthetic routes to antibacterial, antiviral, and anticancer compounds will be given.
