ABSTRACT
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References .......................................................................................................................... 542
The global market of the chemical industry amounts toUS $1.8 trillion, and the contribution to
this of biotechnology has been increasing year by year. According to McKinsey & Company’s
530 Biocatalysis in the Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Industries
report, white biotechnology accounted for only 5% of the market in 2000, but they esti-
mate that it will increase to 10 to 20% by 2010. Biotechnology will be a significant key
innovation driver in the next 10 years. As for the synthesis of various chemical compounds,
biosynthesis has some advantages over conventional chemical synthesis. Reactions catalyzed
by biocatalysts proceed under modest conditions with remarkable rate acceleration (up to
1018), and thus applying them to industrial syntheses prevents the wasting of fossil fuels required
for preparing high-temperature and high-pressure conditions that are commonly required for
conventional chemical syntheses. Above all, the excellent stereoselectivities of biocatalysts
enabling the formation of enantiomerically pure products are a particularly attractive feature,
because the chirality of a molecule is a very important factor in the pharmaceutical field. In
fact, over half of the top 100 pharmaceuticals are chiral molecules, and this chiral drug
market netted over US $145 billion in 2003. The industrial production methods for optically
active compounds, regardless of the catalysts, have been reviewed by Breuer et al. [1]. There
are two major strategies for the syntheses of optically active compounds: optical resolution of
racemic mixtures and stereoselective conversion of prochiral structures. In this chapter, we
describe recent successful examples of industrialized enzymatic chiral compound syntheses
involving these two strategies.
