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Industry Awards

The ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable hosts an annual awards program to recognize green chemistry innovations that advance sustainability in the pharma industry and allied industrial partners. Applications for the 2025 cycle are now closed. Winners will be selected in early 2025. The awards are given during a ceremony at the Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference, held next June 23-26 in Pittsburgh, PA, and are invited to present their winning technology at a symposium during this event.

Congratulations to the 2025 Award Winners!

Merck

From Bottleneck to Breakthrough: Developing a Sustainable and Scalable Manufacturing Process for a Complex ADC Drug-Linker

2025 Pete Dunn Award Winner

The Merck team demonstrated the impact of applying green chemistry principles in the manufacturing process of the linker for the antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) Sacituzumab tirumotecan (MK-2870).

Olon

Recombinant DNA technology and chimeric protein expression for sustainable production of therapeutic peptides by microbial fermentation

2025 CMO Excellence Award Winner

Olon S.p.A. developed a flexible manufacturing platform for the synthesis of peptide therapeutics that reduces solvent and toxic material usage, as well as minimizing excess building blocks by using no protecting groups.

Corteva

A Sustainably-Designed Manufacturing Process to Adavelt™ Active from Renewable Feedstocks

2025 Pete Dunn Award Winner

The Corteva team demonstrated the design of an efficient manufacturing process for Adavelt™ active, with sustainability as a core focus.

Pfizer

Walk-Up Automated Reaction Profiling (WARP) System: A Tool for Reaction Monitoring Designed for Discovery Chemists

2025 Green Discovery Chemistry Award Winner

Pfizer received this innaugral award for thier WARP system emphasizes waste reduction and minimizing exposure to hazardous substances.

Merck and Sunthetics

Algorithmic Process Optimization (APO) for Pharmaceutical Development

2025 Data Science Award Winner

The Merck and Sunthetics team developed and demonstrated the APO technology allows for sustainable process design by minimizing material use and selecting non-toxic reagents, translating into reductions of the drug development costs.

Peter J. Dunn Awards for Green Chemistry & Engineering Impact in the Pharmaceutical Industry

The Peter J. Dunn Awards were established in 2016 by the ACS GCIPR to recognize excellence in the research, development and execution of green chemistry that demonstrates compelling environmental, safety and efficiency improvements over current technologies in the pharmaceutical industry and its allied industrial partners. 

Data Science and Modeling for Green Chemistry

The Data Science and Modeling for Green Chemistry award aims to recognize the research and development of computational tools that guide the design of sustainable chemical processes and the execution of green chemistry that demonstrates compelling environmental, safety, and efficiency improvements over current technologies in the pharmaceutical industry and its allied industrial partners.

CMO Excellence in Green Chemistry 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.

Green Discovery Chemistry Award

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

Past Winners

Algorithmic Process Optimization (APO) for Pharmaceutical Development.

2025 Data Science and Modeling for Green Chemistry Award The Merck and Sunthetics team, consisting of Kevin Stone, Daniela E. Blanco, Kaitlyn Brinza, Melodie Christensen, Shane Grosser, Yasser Khelalef, Abderrahman Lazizi, Andy Liaw, Spencer McMinn, Rafik Oulbsir, Victor Schultz, Ethan Tenison, César A. Urbina-Blanco, Ajit Vikram, and Yuting Xu, is awarded for their work, “Algorithmic Process Optimization (APO) for […]

Recombinant DNA technology and chimeric protein expression for sustainable production of therapeutic peptides by microbial fermentation

2025 CMO Excellence in Green Chemistry Award Olon S.p.A is awarded on their innovative work, “Recombinant DNA technology and chimeric protein expression for sustainable production of therapeutic peptides by microbial fermentation.” Leveraging their expertise in microbial fermentation, Olon S.p.A. has developed a flexible manufacturing platform for the synthesis of peptide therapeutics. This novel technology synthesizes peptides […]

From Bottleneck to Breakthrough: Developing a Sustainable and Scalable Manufacturing Process for a Complex ADC Drug-Linker

2025 Peter J. Dunn Award for Green Chemistry & Engineering Impact in the Pharmaceutical Industry The Merck team, consisting of Patrick Fier, Patrick Moon, Scott McCann, Tao Liang, Greg Estrada, Marc Poirier, Reed Larson, Lu Wang, Gao Shang, and Fuh-Rong Tsay, received this award for their work, “From Bottleneck to Breakthrough: Developing a Sustainable and Scalable Manufacturing Process for a Complex ADC Drug-Linker”. They demonstrated the impact of applying green chemistry principles in the […]

A Sustainably-Designed Manufacturing Process to Adavelt™ Active from Renewable Feedstocks.

2025 Peter J. Dunn Award for Green Chemistry & Engineering Impact in the Pharmaceutical Industry Corteva’s winning submission “A Sustainably-Designed Manufacturing Process to Adavelt™ Active from Renewable Feedstocks.” The Corteva team demonstrated the design of an efficient manufacturing process for Adavelt™ active, with sustainability as a core focus. They adopted green chemistry principles to maximize […]

Walk-Up Automated Reaction Profiling (WARP) System: A Tool for Reaction Monitoring Designed for Discovery Chemists

2025 Green Discovery Chemistry Award The Pfizer team has been awarded the inaugural prize for their submission, “Walk-Up Automated Reaction Profiling (WARP) System: A Tool for Reaction Monitoring Designed for Discovery Chemists.” The WARP system emphasizes waste reduction and minimizing exposure to hazardous substances. The technology provides a useful and versatile profiling tool for challenging reactions and […]

Sustainable Manufacturing Process for Commercial and Developmental Stage Intermediates through Two Consecutive Flow Reactions using Micro-packed Bed Technology

2024 CMO Excellence in Green Chemistry Award The PharmaBlock team was selected based on their innovative work on “Sustainable Manufacturing Process for Commercial and Developmental Stage Intermediates through Two Consecutive Flow Reactions using Micro-Packed Bed Technology.” Team members are Feng Zhang, Guangchao Ma, Dafen Wen, Yang Zhu, and Yuanxian Wang, all based in Nanjing, China. Their project […]

PMI Prediction and Bayesian Optimization: Two Tools with One Goal Towards the Development of ‘Greener-by-Design’ Synthesis of APIs

2024 Data Science & Modeling for Green Chemistry Award The Bristol Myers Squibb team received the innaugral Data Sciences and Modeling Award for Green Chemistry award.  Richard Fox, Jun Li, Jacob Albrecht, Jason Stevens, Jose Tabora, Alina Borovika, and Benjamin Shields (BMS) partnered with Jose Garido (Princeton), Professor Ryan Adams (Princeton), and Professor Abigail Doyle […]

Development of a short and eco-friendly asymmetric manufacturing process for Spiroketone CD 7659

2024 Peter J. Dunn Award for Green Chemistry & Engineering Impact in the Pharmaceutical Industry 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 […]

Development of a More Sustainable 2nd Generation Route to Peptide-Maleimidocaproyl MonoMethyl Auristatin F (mcMMAF)-the Cytotoxic Payload for Blenrep®, A Novel Antibody Conjugate Drug (ACD) for the Treatment of Multiple Myeloma

2024 Peter J. Dunn Award for Green Chemistry & Engineering Impact in the Pharmaceutical Industry GSK’s winning submission demonstrated a more sustainable peptide manufacturing route for maleimidocaproyl monomethyl auristatin F (mcMMAF)—a drug used to treat multiple myeloma, a rare cancer affecting plasma cells. GSK team members being recognized are Danny Mancheno, Ian Andrews, Qiaogong Su, […]

From wood pulp to a candidate medicine: Green manufacturing technologies enable the production of investigational leukemia drug nemtabrutinib from a biorenewable commodity material

2022 Peter J. Dunn Award for Green Chemistry & Engineering Impact in the Pharmaceutical Industry A team from Merck in Rahway, NJ is the recipient of the 2022 Peter J. Dunn Award for Green Chemistry and Engineering Impact in the Pharmaceutical Industry. Merck team members receiving the award are Karla Camacho Soto, Mike DiMaso, Jacob […]

Leveraging innovative manufacturing technologies to deliver sustainable processes: A production-scale continuous [2 + 2] photocycloaddition to prepare a key raw material

2022 CMO Excellence in Green Chemistry Award The Inaugural CMO Excellence in Green Chemistry Award goes to Asymchem, located in Tianjin, China, for “Leveraging innovative manufacturing technologies to deliver sustainable processes: A production-scale continuous [2 + 2] photocycloaddition to prepare a key raw material.” Asymchem developed a continuous gas-liquid biphasic photochemical cycloaddition of maleic anhydride […]