Chiral Compounds from Biotechnology - Production Costs, Economics and Technology

Chirality is recognized as the key to the efficacy of many biopharmaceutical, products in use today. For example, antibiotics, alkaloids and steroids - isolated from natural sources or by fermentation - and their semi-synthetic derivatives are optically pure, containing a few or many asymmetric carbon atoms per molecule. Their racemic counterparts produced by chemical synthesis may be totally inactive or exhibit reduced activity.

The survey determines the status of chiral products in the biopharmaceutical area with particular reference to the production costs and economics of biotechnological process routes including:

• fermentation
• microbial transformation
• soluble enzyme conversion
• immobilized biocatalysis - with enzymes
• immobilized biocatalysis - with biomass