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The ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable (GCIPR) is pleased to be releasing a set of eight Reagent Guides. Like the Roundtable’s Solvent Selection Guide, which helps chemists choose better solvents, these eight guides will serve as a mechanism for scientists to choose reagents that will reduce the overall impact of their chemistry. Chemists have a limited set of reagents in their toolbox to effect chemical transformations, and many of these should rarely, if ever, be used. These guides put a spotlight on which existing reagents are best and encourage the use of a select group of reagent. Because the number of “better” reagents is few, the guides implicitly encourage chemists to continue to discover new reagents and chemistries that make synthetic chemistry more sustainable. While solvents do comprise the largest input to pharmaceutical manufacturing processes, reagents are essential components in chemical transformations and are critical to achieving greener chemistry.
Up until now, there has been nothing like this available to synthetic organic chemists whether they are in industry or academia. On the website, users can explore a wide variety of fully-vetted reagents and discover how each performs in terms of industrially relevant utility, scalability and greenness. For each type of chemical transformation, a Venn diagram visually displays which reagents meet each of these three criteria and where the “sweet spot” for chemical transformation resides. This interactive guide makes it easier to start research and development with a green reagent rather than trying to later replace a more hazardous reagent with a less hazardous one.
The guides are available for use following a simple registration on reagentguides.com. Additional guides are being developed and made available on the site only to GCIPR members and will be made available to the public after a period of exclusivity . The tool is intended to provide a balanced assessment of reagents, provide easy access to the chemical literature or procedures related to the reagents, and to raise awareness of emerging green chemistry methods.
The ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable Reagent Guide is adapted from guides originally developed by Pfizer to be used by their medicinal and process chemists. The idea was first published in 2008, and it has been expanded by chemists in many of the PRT member companies.
Commonly available tools developed by the ACS GCI Roundtables have a range of benefits; for example, they accelerate the rate at which scientists across companies, research labs, and the world can integrate green chemistry and engineering practices into their research, development and manufacturing activities, thereby delivering more sustainable products. For the roundtable member companies, there is the potential to save resources through collaborating on the creation and maintenance of this and other tools.
Explore the reagent guides now.
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