Integrating Enzymes with Chemocatalysts to Create New Reactions Pathways

化学在可持续社会的发展中起着关键作用。非常需要开发“更绿色”和环境友好的工艺。在化学和生物学的接口跨学科研究可以通过实现新的和可持续的反应途径，为合成有价值的产品，如制药，农用化学品和其他精细化学品，以应对这一全球性挑战。高比例的药物含有酰胺键，酰胺的合成是药物化学中最常用的反应之一。尽管酰胺键形成的广泛传播，它面临着未解决的问题。酰胺的合成需要使用化学计量量的偶联剂，这是昂贵的，在反应纯化中产生显著的问题，并导致大量的废物。此外，用于合成酰胺的许多试剂和溶剂是有毒的。鉴于迫切需要替代的、更清洁的和更有效的催化方法来产生酰胺，通过将化学催化与生物催化相结合，已经开发了用于酰胺键形成的前所未有的方法。由于酶对反应性的高度控制和环境友好的反应条件，生物催化变得越来越重要。然而，并不是所有的化学转化都可以通过使用生物催化剂来实现。相比之下，过渡金属催化的偶联反应在生物系统中并不自然存在。因此，两种催化剂体系的组合为全新的化学转化打开了机会，这不能通过单独使用生物催化或单独的化学催化来实现。在此，我报告的发展相结合的酶腈水合酶（NHase）与过渡金属催化的Ullmann型芳基化的酰胺合成从容易获得的有机腈的综合反应方法。所提出的综合化学和生物催化的工作已经实现为在温和和环境友好的反应条件下合成含酰胺键的分子的高效和前所未有的方法。生物催化剂可以容易地大量制备。化学催化步骤已被广泛优化，使廉价和丰富的第一行过渡金属催化剂的利用。广泛的范围表明了综合反应的适用性。此外，已成功实现了用于合成高价值的手性酰胺结构单元的概念验证。因此，腈水合酶和过渡金属催化的整合代表了一种全新的、强有力的酰胺可持续合成方法，克服了现有方法的局限性和缺点。

Chemistry plays a key role for the development of a sustainable society. There is a tremendous need for the development of ‘greener’ and environmentally benign processes. Interdisciplinary research at the interface of chemistry and biology can address this global challenge by enabling new and sustainable reaction pathways for the synthesis of valuable products, such as pharmaceutical, agrochemicals and other fine chemicals. A high proportion of pharmaceuticals contain amide bonds and the synthesis of amides is one of the most frequently used reactions in medicinal chemistry. Despite the wide spread of amide bond formation, it faces unsolved problems. The synthesis of amides requires the use of stoichiometric quantities of coupling reagents, which are costly, create significant problems in reaction purification, and lead to large quantities of waste. Furthermore, many reagents and solvents for the synthesis of amides are toxic. Given the urgent need for alternative, cleaner, and more efficient catalytic methods to generate amides, an unprecedented approach for amide bond formation has been developed, by combining chemocatalysis with biocatalysis. Biocatalysis is of increasing importance, due to enzymes’ high control of reactivity and environmentally benign reaction conditions, which are enabled by biocatalysis. However, not every chemical transformation can be achieved by using biocatalysts. In contrast, transition-metal catalysed coupling reactions do not exist naturally in biological systems. Therefore, the combination of both catalyst regimes opens the opportunity for completely new chemical transformations, which cannot be achieved by solely using biocatalysis or chemocatalysis alone. Herein, I report the development of an integrated reaction approach combining the enzyme nitrile hydratase (NHase) with transition-metal catalysed Ullmann-type arylation for the synthesis of amides from readily available organic nitriles. The proposed work for integrated chemo- and biocatalysis has been realised as a highly efficient and unprecedented method for the synthesis of amide bond containing molecules under mild and environmentally benign reaction conditions. The biocatalysts can be readily prepared in large quantities. The chemocatalytic step has been extensively optimised to enable the utilisation of an inexpensive and abundant first-row transition-metal catalyst. The broad scope demonstrates the applicability of the integrated reaction. Further, proof of concept for the synthesis of highly valuable chiral amide building blocks has been successfully realised. Thus, the integration of NHase and transition-metal catalysis represents a completely new and powerful approach for the sustainable synthesis of amides, overcoming the present limitation and drawbacks of established methodologies.