Industrial applications of enzyme biocatalysis: Current status and future aspects.

Accelerating growth and global expansion of antimicrobial resistance has deepened the need for discovery of novel antimicrobial agents. Antimicrobial peptides have clear advantages over conventional antibiotics which include slower emergence of resistance, broad-spectrum antibiofilm activity, and the ability to favourably modulate the host immune response. Broad bacterial susceptibility to antimicrobial peptides offers an additional tool to expand knowledge about the evolution of antimicrobial resistance. Structural and functional limitations, combined with a stricter regulatory environment, have hampered the clinical translation of antimicrobial peptides as potential therapeutic agents. Existing computational and experimental tools attempt to ease the preclinical and clinical development of antimicrobial peptides as novel therapeutics. This Review identifies the benefits, challenges, and opportunities of using antimicrobial peptides against multidrug-resistant pathogens, highlights advances in the deployment of novel promising antimicrobial peptides, and underlines the needs and priorities in designing focused development strategies taking into account the most advanced tools available.

The value of antimicrobial peptides in the age of resistance

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2017/gc/c6gc02328b

Transaminase biocatalysis: optimization and application

While nature has optimized its antifouling strategies over millions of years, synthetic antifouling coatings have not yet reached technological maturity. For an antifouling coating to become technically feasible, it should fulfill many requirements: high effectiveness, long-term stability, durability, ecofriendliness, large-scale applicability, and more. It is therefore not surprising that the search for the perfect antifouling coating has been going on for decades. With the discovery of metal-based antifouling paints in the 1970s, fouling was thought to be a problem of the past, yet its untargeted toxicity led to serious ecological concern, and its use became prohibited. As a response, research shifted focus toward a biocompatible alternative: polymer-based antifouling coatings. This has resulted in numerous advanced and innovative antifouling strategies, including fouling-resistant, fouling-release, and fouling-degrading coatings. Here, these novel and exciting discoveries are highlighted while simultaneously assessing their antifouling performance and practical feasibility.

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Recent Developments and Practical Feasibility of Polymer-Based Antifouling Coatings

Transaminases have attracted considerable interest in their use as biocatalysts for the synthesis of compounds containing chiral amine units, which are widespread within the pharmaceutical, agrochemical, and fine chemical industry. Recent developments in enzyme- and process-engineering have expedited their use in asymmetric synthesis; however, industrial applications are still hindered by a number of factors, including equilibrium thermodynamics, product inhibition, and poor substrate tolerance. Detailed and comprehensive approaches to each of these challenges have been reported during the last two decades; the most representative enzyme discovery and screening strategies, protein and equilibrium engineering, and immobilization techniques are reviewed herein. Furthermore, we present a detailed look into the applications of transaminases for the synthesis of a variety of amine-containing compounds and the integration of transaminases into multienzymatic systems that allow access to a variety of highly comp...

Discovery, Engineering, and Synthetic Application of Transaminase Biocatalysts

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in therapeutic peptides within the pharmaceutical industry with more than 50 peptide drugs on the market, approximately 170 in clinical trials, and >200 in preclinical development. However, the current state of the art in peptide synthesis involves primarily legacy technologies with use of large amounts of highly hazardous reagents and solvents and little focus on green chemistry and engineering. In 2016, the ACS Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Roundtable identified development of greener processes for peptide API as a critical unmet need, and as a result, a new Roundtable team formed to address this important area. The initial focus of this new team is to highlight best practices in peptide synthesis and encourage much needed innovations. In this Perspective, we aim to summarize the current challenges of peptide synthesis and purification in terms of sustainability, highlight possible solutions, and encourage synergies between academia, the pharmaceutical industry, and contract research organizations/contract manufacturing organizations.

Martin N. Kenworthy

Papers

Sustainability Challenges in Peptide Synthesis and Purification: From R&D to Production

Use of ω-Transaminase Enzyme Chemistry in the Synthesis of a JAK2 Kinase Inhibitor