Green Chemistry Strategies for Drug Discovery

It is rapidly becoming clear that by incorporating green chemistry techniques earlier in drug development, pharmaceutical companies can greatly speed the production of a drug candidate.

Integrating green chemistry protocol into the drug discovery discipline is a relatively new phenomenon, as the scale at which chemists operate in drug discovery is smaller than in process and manufacturing chemistry.

Written by experts pioneering green chemistry efforts within their own institutions, Green Chemistry Strategies for Drug Discovery provides a practical guide illustrating to both academic and industrial labs how to implement greener process approaches for the greatest return on their investment, and without slowing down their science.

The Editors have taken a comprehensive approach to this emerging field, covering the entire drug discovery process from molecule conception, through synthesis, formulation and toxicology, with specific examples and case studies where green chemistry strategies have been implemented. They also address cutting-edge topics like biologics discovery, continuous processing and intellectual property.

Green Chemistry Strategies for Drug Discovery is the newest publication in the RSC Drug Discovery series. Further details on the content and scope of this book can be found on its Books Publishing page. If you like what you read, Green Chemistry Strategies for Drug Discovery is available now as a hardback from our Royal Society of Chemistry Bookshop. It is also in our 2015 eBook collection.

Front cover of "Green Chemistry for Drug Discovery"

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Chip fat to biofuel made easy

It is possible to synthesise hydrocarbon biofuel from waste fats and oils, such as cooking oils. Traditionally this process occurs with a catalyst under harsh alkaline conditions and in the presence of hydrogen. As a result, waste solvent is produced and not enough oxygen is removed for compatibility with diesel engines. In addition, with the presence of fatty acids the process does not work and the catalyst is deactivated.

In recent experiments, Ding Ma (Peking University) and Ning Yan (National University of Singapore), tested a series of nickel-based salts as pre-catalysits for deoxygenating fatty acids and triglycerides and forming shorter chain hydrocarbons, without the need for a solvent or hydrogen. The nickel nanoparticles that are formed act as a catalytic species and are stabilised by the presence of fatty acids. Although these preliminary results look promising, a lot more research into the applications and commercial viability of the findings are required.

Do you want to find out more?

Read the full Chemistry World article by Abigail Hallowes

Or, take a look at the original article which is free to access until 17th August 2015:

Effective deoxygenation of fatty acids over Ni(OAc)2 in the absence of H2and solvent” by W. Li et al., DOI:10.1039/c5gc01147g

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Christian Stevens wins Emerging Technologies Competition 2015

Green Chemistry Advisory Board member Christian Stevens has won first prize in the Energy & sustainability stream of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Emerging Technologies Competition 2015. In this third year of the competition, applications were also accepted from outside the UK which enabled Christian and Wouter Ducheyne, of Ghent University and Caloritum in Belgium, achieve this success.

Their winning technology is a ‘Chemical pump for recovery of industrial waste heat’ and was developed jointly by the University of Ghent and Caloritum. It is an industrial chemical heat pump that can recover waste heat between 75-150°C and increase this to a useful heat level of over 200°C. This is a bio-inspired technology, being based on the phosphate transfer in the ATP-ADP cycle that occurs in the human body. Addressing a problem that cost the EU over €52bn per year, the patented technology can be implemented in production processes ranging from the petrochemical industry to food production and power generation.

The Emerging Technologies Competition is the Royal Society of Chemistry’s flagship annual innovation event and saw thirty teams pitch their emerging technologies to experienced judging panels. There are three streams to the competition: Healthcare, Energy & sustainability, and Materials and the top three teams in each stream received a prize at the ceremony on Monday 29th June 2015. First prize winners receive a cash prize of £20,000, a profile in Chemistry World magazine, and a personalised package of tailored business support from one or more of the competition partner companies – all of which are major multinationals (such as Croda, Procter & Gamble, Pfizer, GSK etc.) with considerable experience in bringing new products to market.

We would like to congratulate Christian Stevens and Wouter Ducheyne for achieving this accolade.

Pictured: Christian Stevens (left) and Wouter Ducheyne (right), pitching at the annual innovation event.

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New Green Chemistry Board Member: Martina Peters

We are pleased to welcome Dr Martina Peters as a new Green Chemistry Editorial Board Member.

Martina Peters studied Chemistry at RWTH Aachen University in Germany and at the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA. She finished her PhD with Prof. Walter Leitner at RWTH Aachen University in 2008 and continued as PostDoc at the CAT Catalytic Center at RWTH Aachen. In 2010 she joined Bayer Technology Services as project manager, focusing on chemical utilization of CO2 as C1-building block for polymers. In 2012 she became head of “Chemical Catalysis” at Bayer Technology Services, a team providing chemical expertise for different areas of application within Bayer. Since mid-2014 Martina is a senior strategists at Bayer AG in the area of Technology and Manufacturing Strategy. In her free time she enjoys doing sports, especially mountain biking.

Take a look at some of her contributions to Royal Society of Chemistry Journals (free to access until 30th August 2015):

Life cycle assessment of CO2 capture and utilization: a tutorial review, Niklas von der Assen, Philip Voll, Martina Peters and André Bardow , Chem. Soc. Rev., 2014,43, 7982-7994, DOI: 10.1039/C3CS60373C

Screening of new solvents for artemisinin extraction process using ab initio methodology, Alexei A. Lapkin, Martina Peters, Lasse Greiner, Smain Chemat, Kai Leonhard, Marcel A. Liauw and Walter Leitner, Green Chem., 2010,12, 241-251, DOI: 10.1039/B922001A

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Plant waste solar panels

James Sherwood is a guest web-writer for Green Chemistry. James is a research associate in the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence at the University of York. His interests range from the certification and application of bio-based products, to the understanding of solvent effects in organic synthesis.

 A low cost, low energy route to solar grade silicon from rice hull ash (RHA), a sustainable source High purity silicon is essential for manufacturing solar panels. Unfortunately this prerequisite conversion of silica to elemental silicon requires a lot of energy, and the associated greenhouse gas emissions are significant. It has now been demonstrated that the ashes from burning biomass (rice hulls in this case) can provide a rich source of silica than can be reduced to give solar grade silicon.

For the preparation of the silica from rice hull ash only dilute acid and hot water are required. The energy requirement to then produce 99.9999% pure silicon is an order of magnitude less than the conventional process and is actually lower than the energy created by burning the rice hulls in the first place. As the carbon dioxide generated by burning biomass is originally fixed from the atmosphere by plants, the carbon footprint for the production of this sustainable silicon is very low.

Read the advanced article in Green Chemistry online now:

A low cost, low energy route to solar grade silicon from rice hull ash (RHA), a sustainable source

Julien C. Marchal, David J. Krug III, Patrick McDonnell, Kai Sun and Richard M. Laine

Green Chem., 2015, Advance Article. DOI: 10.1039/C5GC00622H

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Green Chemistry leads the field with Impact Factor of 8.02

We are delighted to announce that Green Chemistry’s Impact Factor* has risen to a new high of 8.02.

This fantastic achievement secures the journal’s position as the #1 home for the green chemistry community, and as the highest impact journal publishing on sustainable chemistry and technology.

The journal and its stellar Editorial Board continue to lead the field, publishing innovative research with a wide general appeal.

A huge thank you goes to all of our authors, referees and Board members for their continued help and support, and we invite you to submit your next high quality paper to Green Chemistry.

Check out the following selection of highly cited articles that contributed to this Impact Factor:

Camilla Parmeggiani and Francesca Cardona
DOI: 10.1039/C2GC16344F

Agnieszka Brandt, John Gräsvik, Jason P. Hallett and Tom Welton
DOI: 10.1039/C2GC36364J

Sara E. Davis, Matthew S. Ide and Robert J. Davis
DOI: 10.1039/C2GC36441G

David Martin Alonso, Stephanie G. Wettstein and James A. Dumesic
DOI: 10.1039/C3GC37065H

Yanlong Gu
DOI: 10.1039/C2GC35635J

*The Impact Factor provides an indication of the average number of citations per paper. Produced annually, Impact Factors are calculated by dividing the number of citations in a year by the number of citeable articles published in the preceding two years. Data based on 2014 Journal Citation Reports®, (Thomson Reuters, 2015).
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Poster Prizes at the 3rd International Symposium on Green Chemistry

The 3rd International Symposium on Green Chemistry (ISGC) took place on 3rd-7th May in La Rochelle, France. This was sponsored by Green Chemistry and a number of poster prizes were awarded by Green Chemistry Advisory Board member Professor Robin Rogers of McGill University, Canada and Dr Francois Jerome, University of Poitiers, France.

The first prize was awarded to Ana Franco of the University of Cordoba in Spain for her poster ‘Waste to materials: synthesis and applications of mesoporous silicates from rice husk‘. Felix Aremando Reano, of Chaire ABI – AgroParisTech, France, received the second prize for his poster ‘Determination of antioxidant activity of new biobased macrobisphenols‘, and Clemence Queffélec, University of Nantes, France, was awarded the third prize his poster ‘Hydrothermal liquefaction as a route to transform microalgae residues in bio-asphalt‘.

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A photochemical method for separating rare earth metals

Rare earth metals are notoriously hard to separate from one another, due to the similarity of their chemical properties. At present, the complex series of solvent extraction steps to extract rare earths from their ores are only carried out in China. With their increasing utilisation in modern technologies, scientists have been collaborating to develop cleaner less intensive methods of rare earth separation.

Tom Van Gerven and Koen Binnemans of the University of Leuven in Belgium have worked together to combine their expertise and develop a photochemical method for extracting the europium and yttrium from an ionic liquid solution. Both elements are present in their trivalent state, but if europium absorbs light of the correct wavelength (provided by a low pressure mercury lamp) it will reduce to the divalent state and be precipitated out.

Want to know more?

Read the full article in Chemistry World by Jonathan Midgley.

Or, take a look at the original article which is free to access until 8th July 2015:

Photochemical recycling of europium from Eu/Y mixtures in red lamp phosphor waste streams” by B Van den Bogaert et al., DOI:10.1039/c4gc02140a

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Recent HOT articles in Green Chemistry

Check out the following HOT articles, these have all been made free to access for a limited time:

Graphical Abstract
Life Cycle Inventory improvement in the pharmaceutical sector: assessment of the sustainability combining PMI and LCA tools

Daniele Cespi, Evan S. Beach, Thomas E. Swarr, Fabrizio Passarini, I. Vassura, Peter J. Dunn and Paul T. Anastas
Green Chem., 2015, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C5GC00424A

Conventional and microwave assisted hydrolysis of urban biowastes to added value lignin-like products
Daniele Rosso, Jiajun Fan, Enzo Montoneri, Michele Negre, James Clark and Davide Mainero
Green Chem., 2015, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C5GC00357A

Efficient Bromination of Olefins, Alkynes, and Ketones with Dimethyl Sulfoxide and Hydrobromic Acid

Song Song, Xinwei Li, Xiang Sun, Yizhi Yuan and Ning Jiao
Green Chem., 2015, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C5GC00528K

Nanoclusters of Cu (II) Supported on Nanocrystalline W (VI) Oxide: A Potential Catalyst for Single-Step Conversion of Cyclohexane to Adipic Acid
Shankha S. Acharyya, Shilpi Ghosh and Rajaram Bal
Green Chem., 2015, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C5GC00379B

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Professor Roger A. Sheldon elected Fellow of the Royal Society

We would like to congratulate Professor Roger Sheldon, of Delft University of Technology and Green Chemistry Advisory Board member, in being elected as a fellow of the Royal Society. Fellows of the Royal Society are elected for life through a peer review process on the basis of excellence in science.

As Professor of Biocatalysis & Organic Chemistry, Roger is recognised for leading a distinguished career in which he has made pioneering contributions to catalytic oxidation, biocatalysis and green chemistry and has enabled the gap between organic synthesis and catalysis to be bridged. He also introduced the E-factor which has played a major role in drawing attention to the problem of waste generation in chemicals manufacture and provides an impetus for developing cleaner and more sustainable processes. In his most recent appointment as Distinguished Professor of Biocatalysis Engineering at the School of Chemistry at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa, Roger will be involved in the development of green (enantio)selective biocatalytic processes. Roger is also Chief Executive Officer of CLEA Technologies B.V., a Biotech company specializing in the development of green biocatalytic processes and the cost-effective immobilization of enzymes as cross-linked enzyme aggregates.

Roger is revered by the green chemistry community as one of the founding fathers of the field and of this journal.

Read a selection of Roger’s papers – free to access until 15th June 2015:

The E Factor: fifteen years on, Roger A. Sheldon, Green Chem., 2007,9, 1273-1283
DOI: 10.1039/B713736M,

Green solvents for sustainable organic synthesis: state of the art, Roger A. Sheldon, Green Chem., 2005,7, 267-278
DOI: 10.1039/B418069K,

Biocatalysis in ionic liquids, Roger A. Sheldon, Rute Madeira Lau, Menno J. Sorgedrager, Fred van Rantwijk and Kenneth R. Seddon, Green Chem., 2002,4, 147-151
DOI: 10.1039/B110008B,

Professor Dr Roger A. Sheldon—65 years on, Ilya I. Moiseev,   Shun-Ichi Murahashi,   Martyn Poliakoff,  Kenneth R. Seddon and   Vytas K. Švedas, Green Chem., 2008,10, 270-270
DOI: 10.1039/B719347P

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