20 Years of Scientific Breakthroughs That Both Change Patients’ Lives and Sustain a Healthy Planet
By Juan Colberg, Seda Arat, Maria Gonzalez Esguevillas, Scott France, Kailey Huot, Rajesh Kumar, Daniel Laity, Manjinder Lall, Johnny Lee, Javier Magano, Jared Piper, Paul Richardson, Philipp Roosen, Rebecca Watson.
One definition for Green Chemistry (GC) is the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use or generation of hazardous substances. Pfizer has embraced this concept and applied it across the life cycle of its products, facilitating process design, manufacturing, and utilization. Green chemistry principles provide a unique framework to guide process development, which ultimately leads to an optimal chemical process from both an environmental and economic perspective.
moreBy Frank Roschangar, Boehringer Ingelheim
More than ever before, pharmaceutical companies are expected to assess the impact of their sustainable development achievements. However, the lack of a consistent metric system impedes the objective quantification and comparability of key sustainability indicators. One of those indicators is Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) manufacturing waste, which aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12—Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
moreOn June 11, Helen Sneddon, Ph.D., Scientific Team Director in Medicinal Chemistry at GlaxoSmithKline, presented an overview of the ACS Green Chemistry Institute Pharmaceutical Roundtable tools during the 25th Annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference. A summary of her presentation below provides a quick overview of these free public resources. You can also watch Dr. Sneddon’s complete 20-minute presentation at https://www.acsgcipr.org/tools-for-innovation-in-chemistry.
moreBy Matthew Deinhardt, ACS Green Chemistry Institute
Agilent Technologies shares how they are leading the way in sustainable supply chains and instrument production from a holistic approach.
Agilent, a 2021 Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference Gold Sponsor, provides analytical instruments, software, and services for laboratory workflow, from start to finish. The company focuses its services and products to meet the needs of six key markets: food, environmental and forensics, pharmaceutical, diagnostics, chemical and energy, and research. I recently had a chance to interview Agilent’s Michael Frank, Ph.D., Associate Vice President of Global Marketing within the Liquid Phase Separations Division, to discuss how Agilent is improving and “greening” their processes for a more sustainable ecosystem.
moreBy Anthony Maiorana, polymer chemist and writer of The Polymerist Newsletter
If we think about modern industrial chemistry, things really took off around the 1940s as steam cracking, catalytic cracking, and the use of synthetic materials started to become widespread. The widespread availability of refined oil at low costs over the last 60 years created less of a need for refining chemicals from biomass, but crude oil is inherently finite on a human time scale. Over the last few decades we have seen the growth of green chemistry and engineering principles in academia and the chemical industry for numerous reasons, but one of them is the potential future scarcity of oil as a chemical feedstock. If you are reading this then, it is likely through the ACS Green Chemistry Institute and I won’t get into the specifics of green chemistry principles, but I will attempt to write about the utilization of biomass in industrially relevant specialty polymers and plastics.
moreBy Ian Mallov, research chemist at Inkbox Ink
When Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson offered $25 million for the invention of an efficient carbon sequestration technology in 2007, an Oregon environmentalist named Andy Kerr cheekily submitted a drawing of
... moreThe ACS Green Chemistry Institute (GCI) Pharmaceutical Roundtable honors the work of Stephen Dalby, Francois Levesque, Cecilia Bottecchia and Jonathan McMullen at Merck with the 2021 Peter J. Dunn Award for Green Chemistry & Engineering Impact in the Pharmaceutical Industry. The team’s innovation is titled, “Greener Manufacturing of Belzutifan (MK-6482) Featuring a Photo-Flow Bromination.”
moreContributed by Louis J. Diorazio, Chemical Development, Pharmaceutical Technology & Development, Operations, AstraZeneca, Macclesfield, United Kingdom
In the heat of scientific progress and corporate challenges, the role of solvents is often downplayed. It can be easy to assume that a solvent merely dissolves materials, indeed, awareness of solvents for the general public is generally restricted to situations such as cleaning a stain or grease with "a bit of solvent".
moreBy Isamir Martinez, Ph.D., PMP, Scientific Alliances & Business Engagement Manager, ACS Green Chemistry Institute; Stefan Koenig, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Genentech; and, Ben I. Andrews, Investigator of Chemical Development, Product Development & Supply, GlaxoSmithKline
Aiming to employ oligonucleotides (ON), which are short deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) or ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecules, as medical remedies has been a goal of scientists and physicians for some time. As genetic information is carried forth from DNA through RNA, and eventually to the protein output via the central dogma of biology, there exist invaluable opportunities to address illness before it manifests itself.
moreBy David Constable, Science Director, ACS Green Chemistry Institute
I’ve always had a tendency to ask questions, it’s sort of how I’m made. For those of you who have had children, you might surmise that I never got out of the one-question-leads-to-another
... moreBy Dr. Love-Ese Chile, Founder and Technical Director, Regenerative Waste Labs
Since the industrial revolution, scientists have been innovating at a faster rate than ever before. These scientific discoveries and disruptions have been miracles for some, br
... moreBy David Constable Science Director, ACS Green Chemistry Institute
Over the past few months we’ve highlighted the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), showing just a few of the many ways in which chemistry plays an enormous part in achieving the goa
... moreThe ACS Green Chemistry Institute® convened companies in the oil and gas industry at the annual ACS GCI Hydraulic Fracturing Roundtable recently to discuss greener chemicals and processes in hydraulic fracturing. Baker Hughes hosted the meeting at their W
... moreBy David Constable, Science Director, ACS Green Chemistry Institute
In 2013, members of the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute (ACS GCI) Chemical Manufacturers Roundtable (ChMRT), conceived a project to identify how to fundamentally change
... moreBy Christiana Briddell, Sr. Communications Manager, ACS GCI; Jennifer MacKellar, Program Manager, ACS GCI; Marta Gmurczyk, Safety Portfolio Manager, ACS
Today’s environmental headlines are replete with sustainability topics from climate change to plastics
... more