GREEN CHEMISTRY AGS, pharma initiative awards first grant

Abstract

The Pharmaceutical Roundtable of the Green Chemistry Institute, a division of the American Chemical Society, has awarded its first research grant as part of a broad effort to advance green chemistry and engineering practices in the global pharmaceutical industry. The $130,000 grant goes to chemistry professor Jianliang Xiao of the University of Liverpool, in England, whose group will seek to develop a cleaner, more efficient method of reducing amides to amines, an important transformation in drug synthesis. Together with major pharmaceutical firms, the Green Chemistry Institute established the Pharmaceutical Roundtable in 2005. Made up of pharmaceutical industry representatives, the group spent its first year singling out seven common reactions and processes that need cost and environmental improvements, including the amide reduction, and drawing up a wish list of five reactions that chemists would like to add to their research arsenals (C&EN, July 24, 2006, page 36). Last fall, the roundtable called for ...