Recently, the research team led by Professor Lei Xiaoguang from Peking University published a major research achievement in the top international academic journal "Science". By virtue of the new enzyme engineering modification technology, the team successfully rewrote the traditional logic of amide bond synthesis, opening up a new path for the green biological manufacturing of pharmaceutical intermediates and injecting strong momentum into the low-carbon transformation of the pharmaceutical industry. The breakthrough of this technology has solved the long-standing pain points of traditional synthesis processes in the industry and has extremely high industrial application value.

It is reported that the traditional amide bond synthesis process is highly dependent on carboxylic acid raw materials and toxic catalytic reagents, which not only leads to high production costs, but also generates a large amount of industrial wastewater and waste residue, failing to meet the current global development trend of green chemical industry. However, the oxidized amide synthase modified by the Peking University team can directly catalyze the reaction between aldehydes and amines in a mild aqueous environment without adding additional toxic reagents. At the same time, it can use cheap and easily available alcohols as reaction raw materials, greatly reducing the production threshold and cost of pharmaceutical intermediates.

At present, this new synthesis technology has been taken the lead in applying to the synthesis of key intermediates of the anti-cancer drug imatinib. Verified by actual production, it can reduce one-third of the reaction steps, increase the reaction efficiency by more than 40%, and the product purity reaches 99.8%, which fully meets the high-standard requirements of pharmaceutical production. Up to now, the team has reached technical cooperation agreements with many well-known pharmaceutical enterprises at home and abroad, promoting the application of this technology in the production of more anti-tumor and anti-infection pharmaceutical intermediates.

Insiders said that the industrial application of this technology will promote the transformation of the pharmaceutical intermediate industry from "high pollution and high energy consumption" to "green and efficient", further enhance the core competitiveness of China's pharmaceutical intermediate industry, and provide a Chinese solution for the sustainable development of the global pharmaceutical and chemical industry.