Reviewer: Marc A Ilies, PhD (Temple University School of Pharmacy)
Description: This book covers a modern topic: the chemoenzymatic synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients (drugs) through the use of different classes of enzymes.
Purpose: The purpose is to familiarize readers with the state-of-the-art in the area of chemoenzymatic synthesis of drugs, to review the main classes of enzymes used in these transformations, and to show how chemoenzymatic synthesis can be used alone and in conjunction with classical chemical synthesis to access a large variety of drugs. The book is extremely useful and fills an important niche in the area of active drug synthesis, with an emphasis on the synthesis of chiral drugs.
Audience: The book is written for professionals working in the areas of medicinal chemistry and drug design (students and scientists), with a focus on individuals involved in the direct synthesis of drugs, multi-step synthesis, and chiral synthesis. It is also useful to biochemists and pharmacists as it deals with important aspects related to isolation, stability, and activity of enzymes, as well as different aspects related to drugs, their synthesis, and their use.
Features: The book presents the use of enzymes in chemical/biochemical synthesis for practical purposes and uses many examples to reveal the state-of-the-art in this area, covering many classes of enzymes and their applications. The practical use of many classes of enzymes such as hydrolases and lipases, oxidoreductases, halogenases, etc., is presented in detail with practical examples and excellent graphics, tables, and illustrations. Different chapters also present basic concepts in commercial use of biocatalysis, process design considerations, microfluidic reactions, metagenomic approach for the discovery of novel enzymes, enzyme kinetics, and the use of drugs as enzyme inhibitors. The book also provides a detailed overview in the biosynthetic approaches used to synthesize isoprenoids, prenylated xanthones, tetrahydroquinolones, different classes of antibiotics, amino acid derivatives, non-ribosomal peptides, antidiabetic and antimalarial drugs. The quality of the figures, schemes, and illustrations is exquisite, with smart use of color. The index is comprehensive and useful.
Assessment: This book is high quality and extremely useful for professionals working in the field, as well as for biochemists and pharmacists. It is a unique book, part of Jenny Stanford's comprehensive series on biocatalysis (eight volumes).