Abstract

The industrial scale application of baker’s yeast mediatedreductions of prochiral α,β-unsaturated aldehydes isusually hindered by discouragingly low productivities.Exploiting the recently developed synergic applicationof the in situ substrate-feeding-product-removal (SFPR)technique together with recombinant isolated enzymes(enoate reductases and alcohol dehydrogenases),it was possible to achieve a 50-fold improvement ofthe productivity of the biocatalytic enantioselectivereduction of alphabrocine to the corresponding opticallyactive bromohydrin (98% ee). The latter was thenemployed in the synthesis of the active enantiomer of theappetite suppressant drug (R)-2-benzylmorpholine.