Enzymatic amidation for industrial applications

[Display omitted] •Current state of enzymatic amide bond formation for industrial applications.•Case studies on the four main reported enzyme classes successfully scaled.•Opportunities to increase enzymatic amidation adoption for large scale processes. Nature has developed a robust toolbox for the formation of amide bonds, enabling a variety of disconnections applicable to small molecule synthesis. In spite of this, the exploitation of biocatalytic techniques for industrial synthesis remains limited to a few very important cases. This review discusses previously demonstrated techniques for the biocatalytic synthesis of amide bonds, reviews examples of industrial scale-up of these techniques, and identifies a number of limitations to the scalability within the current state of the art.