Role of Biocatalysis

A wide variety of chemical changes are catalysed by enzymes, usually under relatively moderate reaction conditions and with good selectivity. Enzymes are appealing catalysts for industrial chemical transformations because of their characteristics, which allow for less resource- and waste-intensive synthesis methods. As a result, biocatalysis is already a key tenet of chemistry and continues to be relevant in both academic and corporate research.

Enzymes are utilised for bio-transformations in almost all industrial sectors, including food, pharmaceuticals, textiles, biofuels, paper, chemicals, and household goods. Biocatalysis, also known as enzyme-mediated catalysis or enzymatic catalysis, has rapidly expanded as an enabling technology in the production of fine chemicals, medicines, and related intermediates. For different bio-transformations like oxidations, reductions, additions, and eliminations, enzymes are available.

The type of individual biocatalysts employed, substrates, co-factors, and reaction conditions that are used determine how biocatalytic processes develop and scale up. Similar to chemical catalysis, it is necessary to carefully manage the reaction variables in combination with data from in-process analytical measurements to understand this complicated, interconnected matrix of factors. However, the continuous manual direction of biocatalysis reactions, which has considerable time and resource costs, is responsible for a large portion of the process development, scale-up, and data density restrictions for contemporary systems. In order to address the growing regulatory and institutional need for process characterization and technology transfer, manual operation necessitates the presence of personnel at the bioreactor for nearly constant tending, modification, and sampling.

Lab automation platforms that react to dynamic reaction conditions continuously assessed by integrated sensors and process analytical technologies make it possible to operate biocatalysis unattended (PAT). Platforms for automated synthesis reactors speed up experimentation while reducing human mistake or interference. All Critical Process Parameters (CPP) can be overlayed and trended in conjunction with modular, automated reactor sampling for offline chromatographic analysis. Real-time, automatically recorded data for parameter control and process analytics is organised for data management and archiving. Evidence-based scale-up is further streamlined by decreased experimental variability and increased repeatability across various reactor scales.