Evaluating Multienzyme Cascade Routes for Pharmaceutically Relevant Molecules

The constant demand for sustainable approaches to pharmaceutical synthesis has thrived the enzyme catalysis (biocatalysis) field. The most sought‐after features like high specificity, environmentally benign, and biodegradable nature have rendered enzymatic processes predominantly eco‐friendly. Owing to these merits, biocatalysis is now being developed extensively to exploit their applications in designing alternate and sustainable synthetic routes for manufacturing pharmaceuticals, in line with green chemistry principles. Further, combining multiple enzymes in one‐pot is a highly efficient methodology as it eliminates intermediate isolation, shifts equilibrium in the forward direction, and proceeds in ambient aqueous conditions. This review highlights the importance of recently developed multienzyme cascade synthesis of pharmaceutically important bioactive molecules by relating them with their well‐known chemical route. Enzyme catalysis has emerged as a greener and more sustainable approach for obtaining a variety of chiral building blocks and APIs. In recent years, researchers have successfully demonstrated various multienzyme cascade syntheses to obtain APIs. Following these breakthroughs, the application of enzyme cascade reactions is driving the industry to manufacture APIs on a multikilogram scale. This also emphasizes the promising potential of Systems Biocatalysis, which is yet to be fully harnessed for a better tomorrow. This review highlights the importance of the recently developed multienzyme cascade synthesis of pharmaceutically important bioactive molecules.