Sepracor: Skating on 'Ice'

Asymmetric Catalysis by Architectural and Functional Molecular Engineering: Practical Chemo- and Stereoselective Hydrogenation of Ketones

“…[160] Eli Lilly sells racemic fluoxetine hydrochloride as the antidepressant Prozac with a market value of $2.6 billion (1997). [161] However, the R enantiomer is more potent. Furthermore, as illustrated in Scheme 38, asymmetric hydrogenation of a g-amino ketone (S/C 10 000/1) allows for the direct asymmetric synthesis of the potent antipsychotic BMS 181100.…”

Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products in the Environment: Agents of Subtle Change?

“…A recent trend in the pharmaceutical industry, and now sup? ported by the FDA, is to produce only the optically pure therapeutic isomer (31). This has the potential to not only lessen side effects, but for some drugs, the total dosage can be lessened by at least 50%.…”

Chemoenzymatic asymmetric synthesis of fluoxetine, atomoxetine, nisoxetine, and duloxetine

“…Although fluoxetine was sold as a racemic compound, it was later shown that the (R)-enantiomer is the so-called 'Improved Chemical Entity' version of the drug. 6 Herein we report the asymmetric synthesis of the (R)-enantiomer of all of these four molecules from enantiopure cyanohydrins. The retrosynthetic analysis is presented below (Scheme 1).…”