Merging MOF Chemistry & Biocatalysis: A Perspective for Achieving Efficient Organic Synthetic Processes and Applications in the Chemical Industry?

Abstract

Biocatalysis has emerged in recent decades toward a widely applied catalysis technology in the chemical industry. In particular the fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals industries benefit from the advantages of biocatalysis, which made its way to a dominating industrial core technology for manufacturing chiral molecules. However, often biocatalysis is still to a certain extent away from having solved all challenges being needed for a “perfect industrial process technology”. Among existing challenges are, e.g., stability under process conditions and easy separation of the catalyst from the reaction mixture with the additional option of recyclability. Here metal-organic framework (MOF) structures offer unique advantages, which can be beneficial for biocatalysis. A particular valuable option is integration of enzymes into MOF-subunits, thus having a potential positive impact on stability (by reducing the tendency of unfolding) and enabling compartmentalization as a beneficial strategy in, e.g., chemoenzymatic synthesis. In this “Perspective”-article, first the state of the art in biocatalysis is briefly summarized together with current challenges. Then, a short overview about current research achievements in “merging” MOF chemistry and biocatalysis is given as well as an outlook written from a biocatalysis practitioner's view, how MOF-enzyme hybrid systems can play a major role in future process development to overcome existing hurdles of enzymatic catalysis.