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Author: Christiana Briddell

31st Annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference

GCIPR at the GC&E Conference

San Antonio Membership Meeting

ACS GCIPR members attending the 2026 GC&E Conference in San Antonio, TX. Photo credit: Chad Isaiah Photography

The ACS Green Chemistry Institute’s Green Chemistry and Engineering (GC&E) Conference is the premier global event for green chemistry and engineering. The ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable is a Gold Sponsor of GC&E and organizes many symposia.

The 2027 GC&E Conference theme is “Driving Responsible Consumption and Production”. The Conference will take place June 7–10, 2027, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

  • Roundtable Poster Reception
    The ACS GCI Industrial Roundtable Poster Reception, sponsored by the GCIPR, showcases industry-relevant science and provides a space for networking with industry at the GC&E Conference.
  • Industry Awards
    The GCIPR industrial green chemistry awards will be presented at the GC&E Conference. Winners will be presenting their innovations at the session, “Advancing Sustainable Processes in Pharma and Allied Industries via Green Chemistry Innovations.”

  • Student Travel Awards
    In this special session, “Sustainability in Organic Chemistry,” graduate students and postdoctoral scholars accepted to present will receive a $1200 travel grant from the ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable to assist in their in-person conference attendance.

  • Gold Sponsor
    The ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable is a proud Gold Sponsor of the GC&E Conference.

  • Symposium Organized
    The GCIPR organizes several sessions at GC&E. Sessions will be announced in December.
  • Roundtable Member Meeting

    The summer in-person and virtual meeting of GCIPR member companies will take place on Monday, June 7, 2027, at the GC&E Conference. 

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Green Chemistry Articles of Interest to the Pharmaceutical Industry – April 2026

Miles H. Aukland, Theresa Dutschei, Oliver D. Engl, Pascal S. Engl, Álvaro Enríquez García, Alejandro Gimenez Molina, Vanessa Harawa, Christopher B. Kelly, Alexandre Leclair, Johnny W. Lee, Zhen Lei, Wei Li, Matthew Osborne, Kedwin Rosa Pagan, Jan Pawlas, Paul F. Richardson, Amarjit Singh, William J. Smith, Alan Steven, Balaram S. Takale; Green Chemistry Articles of Interest to the Pharmaceutical Industry. Org. Process Res. Dev. 17 April 2026; 30 (4): 807–816. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.oprd.5c00432

Amgen

Improving Efficiency and Sustainability of the Olpasiran Drug Substance Process

Improving Efficiency and Sustainability of the Olpasiran Drug Substance Process

2026 Peter J. Dunn Award for Green Chemistry & Engineering Impact in the Pharmaceutical Industry – Large Molecule

Amgen‘s Olpasiran team is recognized for developing a more efficient and environmentally responsible manufacturing process for olpasiran, a GalNAc‑conjugated siRNA therapeutic. Guided by green chemistry principles, the team streamlined multiple stages of the synthetic route, including starting material preparation, GalNAc ligand synthesis, and the conjugation process. Through targeted optimization, hazardous solvents and reagents were replaced with safer, lower‑risk alternatives, while maintaining or improving process yields. These enhancements were successfully demonstrated at multi‑kilogram scale (>30 kg), ensuring both scalability and robustness.

The optimized process delivers substantial sustainability benefits: up to a 37% reduction in E‑factors and more than 25% reduction in solvent and waste at peak production levels. This work highlights how thoughtful process redesign can significantly decrease environmental impact while enabling reliable, large‑scale manufacturing of advanced RNA therapeutics.

Amgen

Team Members

  • Janine Tom
  • Edward Helbling
  • Meagan Hackey
  • Timur Berilo
  • Amanda Stahl
  • Shea O’Sullivan
  • Heather Johnson
  • Andrew Cosbie
  • Bharath Venkatram
  • Yan Chen
Amgen's Olpasiran team Amgen‘s Olpasiran team

More about the Award

The Peter J. Dunn Award, established in 2016, recognizes outstanding industrial implementation of novel green chemistry and/or engineering in the pharmaceutical industry that demonstrates compelling environmental, safety, cost, and/or efficiency improvements over current technologies.

This annual award is presented at the Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference, where presenters are invited to share their innovations. 

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Bristol Myers Squibb

Sustainable Manufacturing of Repotrectinib API – BMS-986472

Sustainable Manufacturing of Repotrectinib API – BMS-986472

2026 Peter J. Dunn Award for Green Chemistry & Engineering Impact in the Pharmaceutical Industry – Small Molecule

The Bristol Myers Squibb team is recognized for a breakthrough redesign of the manufacturing route for Repotrectinib (BMS 986472) API, delivering major sustainability and efficiency gains through green chemistry innovation. By integrating retrosynthetic redesign with environmentally conscious process optimization, the team achieved a fourfold yield improvement, from 11% to 45%, while reducing isolations from ten to six and fully eliminating dioxane and all halogenated solvents and reagents. The introduction of a second-generation biocatalytic route for a key raw material further demonstrates a shift toward cleaner, renewable, low-impact technologies.

These combined efforts drove 43–73% reductions across multiple life cycle assessment metrics, including cycle time, cost per kilogram, Process Mass Intensity, Mass Net, energy consumption, CO₂ emissions, and water depletion. The project showcases how sustainable design and operational excellence can coexist to deliver greener, more responsible pharmaceutical manufacturing.

Bristol Myers Squibb

Team Members

  • Richard Fox
  • Steven Wisniewski
  • Adam Freitag
  • Yichen Tan
  • Daniel Treitler
  • Hester Dang
  • Geoff Purdum
  • Bilal Hoblos
  • Troy Wilkens
  • Keming Zhu
  • Yiming Yang (Asymchem)

More about the Award

The Peter J. Dunn Award, established in 2016, recognizes outstanding industrial implementation of novel green chemistry and/or engineering in the pharmaceutical industry that demonstrates compelling environmental, safety, cost, and/or efficiency improvements over current technologies.

This annual award is presented at the Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference, where presenters are invited to share their innovations. 

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AstraZeneca

High-throughput Experimentation Enabled Late-stage Functionalization as a Tool for Sustainable Chemistry

High-throughput Experimentation Enabled Late-stage Functionalization as a Tool for Sustainable Chemistry

2026 Green Discovery Chemistry Award

The AstraZeneca team based in Gothenburg, led by Magnus Johansson, has been recognized for developing a powerful suite of high‑throughput experimentation (HTE)–enabled late‑stage functionalization (LSF) methods that significantly advance sustainable medicinal chemistry. LSF allows direct modification of complex molecules, reducing synthesis steps, protecting‑group use, and overall process mass intensity. By integrating automation, nanomolar-scale miniaturization, and informer libraries, the team minimized waste, solvent consumption, and experimental inefficiency.

Key achievements include cobalt‑catalyzed C–H methylation with benign boron donors, iridium‑catalyzed ortho C–H amination optimized using greener solvents, and ruthenium‑catalyzed C–H amidation enabling rapid linker installation. They also created a meta‑selective C(sp²)–H alkylation platform using sp³‑rich reagents to fine‑tune drug‑like properties. Finally, they shared a unified approach to meta‑methyl and fluoroalkyl drug-like analogues, reducing the number of synthetic steps by up to seven and avoiding PFAS‑classified intermediates.

Together, these integrated HTE‑enabled LSF technologies provide scalable, greener pathways to complex, property‑enhanced molecules while substantially reducing energy use, materials consumption, and hazardous waste.

HTE-enabled Methodology Development and Late-Stage Functionalization for Sustainable Drug Discovery AstraZeneca

Team Members

  • Magnus J. Johansson
  • Daniele Antermite
  • Stig D. Friis
  • Elisa Y. Lai
  • Erik Weis
The winning team consists of Magnus J Johansson, Daniele Antermite, Stig D Friis, Elisa Y Lai and Erik Weis.

More about the Award

The Green Discovery Chemistry Award recognizes outstanding efforts in discovery chemistry that demonstrate compelling environmental, safety, and/or efficiency improvements through green chemistry and engineering. 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.

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Aralez Bio

A Biocatalysis Platform for Large‑Scale Noncanonical Amino Acid Manufacturing

2026 CMO Excellence in Green Chemistry Award

The Aralez Bio team is honored for developing a pioneering biocatalysis platform that enables large‑scale, sustainable manufacturing of noncanonical amino acids (ncAAs), critical building blocks in next‑generation therapeutics. Traditional chemical synthesis of ncAAs is often resource‑intensive, inefficient, and environmentally burdensome. Aralez Bio’s technology overcomes long‑standing challenges in biocatalysis, including reaction reversibility, high aqueous volumes, complex downstream processing, and enzyme instability. Their specialized platform supports streamlined, stable, and highly efficient enzymatic transformations.

Within the past year, Aralez Bio expanded its capabilities to include hundreds of additional ncAAs and successfully demonstrated kilogram‑scale production, delivering 20–50 kg batches of key targets. Their biocatalytic processes significantly reduce electricity use, CO₂ emissions, hazardous chemical uses, and overall environmental impact compared with conventional chemical routes. Beyond operational sustainability, Aralez Bio’s ncAAs provide a bio‑based alternative to petroleum‑derived materials, further advancing greener therapeutic development.

Aralez Bio

Team Members

  • Tina Boville
  • David Romney
  • Francis Arnold (CalTech)
  • Bjorn Traag
  • Siobhan MacArdle
  • Nichole Pedowitz
Aralez Bio team members Siobhan and Nichole. Aralez Bio Team

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.

This annual award is presented at the Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference, where presenters are invited to share their innovations. 

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