The Boehringer Ingelheim team—Yongda Zhang, Eugene Chong, Jada White, Suttipol Radomkit, Yibo Xu, Jon Lorenz, and Linglin Wu—was selected for their innovative work developing a short and eco-friendly manufacturing process for Spiroketone CD 7659—a common intermediate used in multiple projects within the company. The team’s new 3-step asymmetric synthesis route improved the yield nearly five-fold from 10 to 47 percent, reduced organic solvent usage by 99 percent, eliminated use of halogenated solvent, and reduced water usage by 76 percent. The sustainability achievements were further highlighted by a PMI of 117, 72 percent Relative Process Greenness (RPG) score, and an “excellent” innovation Green Aspiration Level (iGAL), placing it in the top 10 percent of industry processes. The team highlighted that their process can be scaled to meet and exceed a projected demand of more than 13 tons of the product which will result in saving more than 69,327,473 kg of waste compared to the initial process for one project.
Figure: This iGAL 2.0 scorecard shows the sustainability improvements of Boehringer Ingelheim’s new process for manufacturing Spiroketone CD 7659 over the incumbent process.
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 Confernece where presenters are invited to share their innovations.
Pictured: Yongda Zhang, Distinguished Research Fellow at Boehringer Ingelheim, accepts 2024 Pete Dunn Award from Isamir Martinez (ACSGCI) and ACS GCIPR 2024 Co-Chair, Dan Bailey of Takeda.
