In 2005, the American Chemical Society (ACS) Green Chemistry Institute (GCI) and global pharmaceutical companies established the ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable to encourage the integration of green chemistry and engineering into the pharmaceutical industry. The Roundtable developed a list of key research areas in green chemistry in 2007, which has served as a guide for focusing green chemistry research. Following that publication, the Roundtable companies have identified a list of the key green engineering research areas that is intended to be the required companion of the first list. This publication summarizes the process used to identify and agree on the top key green engineering research areas and describes these areas, highlighting their research challenges and opportunities for improvements from the perspective of the pharmaceutical industry.

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A concise asymmetric synthesis of an 11β-HSD-1 inhibitor has been achieved using inexpensive starting materials with excellent step-economy at low catalyst loadings. The catalytic enantioselective total synthesis of 1 was accomplished in 7 steps and 38% overall yield aided by the development of an innovative, sequential strategy involving Pd-catalyzed pyridinium C–H arylation and Ir-catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenation of the resulting fused tricyclic indenopyridinium salt highlighted by the use of a unique P,N-ligand (MeO-BoQPhos) with 1000 ppm of [Ir(COD)Cl]2.

Millimeter-sized α-glycine crystals were generated from continuous non-seeded cooling crystallization in slug flow. The crystallization process is composed of three steps in sequence: slug formation, crash-cooling nucleation, and growth. Stable uniform slugs of three different aspect ratios (slug length/tubing inner diameter) were formed, by adjusting the flow rates of both the solution and air streams. Besides supersaturation, the slug aspect ratio can also affect primary nucleation outcome. Stable slug flow can accommodate a relative supersaturation (C/C*) of up to 1.5 without secondary nucleation. Large glycine crystals can grow to millimeter size within 10 min, inside millimeter-sized slugs without reducing the slug quality.

A convergent and robust synthesis of a developmental CCR1 antagonist is described using continuous flow technology.