Description

The environmentally friendly industrial synthesis/production of many life-saving medicines is a very important task for pharmaceutical companies. Less waste and fewer steps to obtain the target molecules means cheaper medicines for patients. Given that today more than half of the approved medicines have one or more chiral centers and they are sold as single enantiomers, catalytic asymmetric methods are increasingly employed in the production of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). In the past when racemic synthesis was used in the production phase, 50% of the material had to be discarded as it was the opposite enantiomer that could not be utilized as a drug. The course will examine several key green chemistry principles as well as several strategies for asymmetric synthesis. Case studies will be presented on the synthesis of Sitagliptin (Januvia), Efavirenz (Sustiva) and Tolterodin. Anticipated audience: Students who have taken general chemistry and introductory organic chemistry.