2023 CMO Excellence in Green Chemistry Award
PharmaBlock Sciences from Nanjing, China, received the 2023 CMO Award for their “Innovative Continuous Process for the Production of 3-Oxocyclobutane-1-Carboxylic Acid,” an intermediate used in several marketed drugs and drug candidates. The team developed a novel continuous process to replace the conventional batch production that included an acidic decarboxylation step (Scheme 1 & 2). PharmaBlock reports that the new method is 20 times more efficient: In 10 days, using this new process, PharmaBlock produced over 2 MT with a comparative savings of 68,000 kW energy and the elimination of 8 tons of hazardous waste. In addition, PharmaBlock reduced the exposure of their chemists to potential hazards by developing a remote monitoring system to control the reaction parameters.
PharmaBlock is continuing to work on its innovative process, which is continuous through the decarboxylation, decolorization, extraction, separation, and concentration phase, to include the final steps of crystallization and filtration. Team members on this project included Feng Zhang, Guangchao Ma, Pengpeng Chen, Bing Zhou, Wei Li, Fuxuan Wang, Hao Tian, Li Zhang, and Yuanxian Wang.
Scheme 1. Original Process
Scheme 2. New Process
PharmaBlock is continuing to work on its innovative process, which is continuous through the decarboxylation, decolorization, extraction, separation, and concentration phase, to include the final steps of crystallization and filtration. Team members on this project included Feng Zhang, Guangchao Ma, Pengpeng Chen, Bing Zhou, Wei Li, Fuxuan Wang, Hao Tian, Li Zhang, and Yuanxian Wang.
More about the Award
The CMO Excellence in Green Chemistry Award seeks to recognize outstanding efforts by CMO companies in pharmaceutical green chemistry in support of pharmaceutical research, development, and manufacturing that demonstrate compelling environmental, safety, and/or efficiency improvements. The award recognizes greener advances in synthetic route development for starting materials, intermediates, or active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), including reaction conditions and chemical or manufacturing technologies.
This annual award is presented at the Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference, where a member of the winning team is invited to share their team’s innovations.
Pictured: Zhenzhen Dong, Senior Director, US Head of Business Development & Marketing for Pharmablock accepts the 2023 CMO Award with Roundtable co-chairs, Phillipa Payne (Gilead) and Dan Bailey (Takeda).
