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The ACS Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Roundtable (GCIPR) kicked off its 20th anniversary celebrations with a workshop “Driving Sustainability in Pharma and Allied Industries,” hosted at the AstraZeneca campus in Macclesfield, UK on March 13. The event created a dynamic intermingling of chemists from many different pharmaceutical companies with local university students and other small businesses in the pharma supply chain. Participants gained an understanding of the tools, resources, and activities that have emerged from this 20-year collaboration to advance green chemistry, with the ACS GCIPR co-chairs Mike Kopach (Lilly) and Paul Richardson (Pfizer), and ACS GCI Assistant Director Isamir Martinez, kicking it off.
Invited speakers included Prof. Nick Turner of the University of Manchester who spoke about the frontiers of biocatalysis, and Prof. Helen Sneddon of the University of York, who provided a full overview of the Roundtable tools as useful resources for the classroom and academic research. Providing industry case studies, Steve Swallow demonstrated how AstraZeneca is employing green chemistry to further their ambitious sustainability objectives. Olivier Dapremont, SK Pharmteco, explained how his company is successfully and very efficiently recycling solvents in several key separation processes. Shane McKenna, BMS, presented the Peter Dunn Award-winning sustainable process design for an active pharmaceutical ingredient manufactured by Bristol-Myers Squibb. Other topics included an introduction to sustainability in peptides and oligonucleotides presented by Martin Kenworthy and Anna Watson (AstraZeneca), new technologies for discovery chemistry discussed by Shazia Keily (Vertex), and a review from Álvaro Enríquez Gracia (Lilly) on hazards associated with common solvent used in medicinal chemistry and the importance of appropriate solvent selection, facilitated by the ACS GCIPR Solvent Selection Tool. ACS GCI’s Sederra Ross elicited some friendly competition by leading a trivia game that tested which participants were paying the closest attention to the days’ talks. The workshop closed with a lively poster session where students presented their own research to the attendees. With a 100% satisfaction rate, it was a productive and fun day for all. The Roundtable looks forward to presenting a second full-day workshop in the fall which will be hosted at Takeda in Cambridge, MA.
The workshop took place after the two-day ACS GCIPR meeting where over 50 members participated in-person and online to discuss priorities and report on the progress of initiatives from many of the Roundtable’s focus teams. A big thanks to AstraZeneca for hosting both the meeting and the workshop in their beautiful campus, provided delicious lunches, and giving Roundtable members a tour of their batch and new flow chemistry facilities. It is aways a pleasure to get to hear first-hand how different companies approach sustainability, and we appreciated hearing the ways in which green chemistry plays an important role at AstraZeneca. The Roundtable meetings are exceptional events where companies can come together and learn from each other, and where members can contribute to the mission of the Roundtable to advance green chemistry and engineering throughout the pharma industry and allied spaces.
