{"id":230786,"date":"2026-02-07T05:22:50","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T11:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/engineered-enzymes-enable-greener-one-pot-amide-synthesis-for-drug-manufacturing"},"modified":"2026-02-07T05:22:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T11:22:50","slug":"engineered-enzymes-enable-greener-one-pot-amide-synthesis-for-drug-manufacturing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/engineered-enzymes-enable-greener-one-pot-amide-synthesis-for-drug-manufacturing","title":{"rendered":"Engineered enzymes enable greener one-pot amide synthesis for drug manufacturing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/engineered-enzymes-enable-greener-one-pot-amide-synthesis-for-drug-manufacturing2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A single type of chemical structure that shows up again and again in modern medicine is the amide bond that links a carbonyl group (C=O) to a nitrogen atom. They\u2019re so ubiquitous that 117 of the top 200 small-molecule drugs by retail sales in 2023 feature at least one amide bond. And now, researchers have <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/science.adw3365\" target=\"_blank\">discovered a clever new way<\/a> to reengineer natural enzymes to build amides from simple chemicals like aldehydes and amines.<\/p>\n<p>The team chose a naturally abundant enzyme family called aldehyde dehydrogenases (ALDHs), specifically p-hydroxybenzaldehyde dehydrogenase (PHBDD), which can efficiently convert aldehydes into acids. The team turned it into a new catalyst, known as an <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2025-10-industrial-relevance-alcohol-dehydrogenase-enzymes.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">oxidative amidase<\/a> (OxiAm), by modifying its internal pocket of the enzyme in two major ways: making it hydrophobic to prevent the formation of unwanted acids and making it bigger to allow larger, diverse chemical parts to fit inside so they could be bonded together.<\/p>\n<p>According to the results published in <i>Science<\/i>, the team was able to obtain amides directly from commercially available alcohols via a two-step enzymatic cascade reaction carried out in a single container. This approach could enable new, greener methods for producing five major drug molecules, including a key component of imatinib, an essential drug used to treat chronic myeloid leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A single type of chemical structure that shows up again and again in modern medicine is the amide bond that links a carbonyl group (C=O) to a nitrogen atom. They\u2019re so ubiquitous that 117 of the top 200 small-molecule drugs by retail sales in 2023 feature at least one amide bond. And now, researchers have [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230786\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}