Boehringer Ingelheim taking the lead in Green Chemistry
Green Chemistry is critical for balancing the long-term sustainability of business, society, and the environment. It stimulates scientific innovation, reduces environmental footprint, adds economic value by lowering development and manufacturing costs. Green Chemistry can therefore contribute to improved reputation and greater affordability of drugs for our patients, in particular those in Access To Medicines (ATM) markets. However, its full potential has been inhibited by its intangible value proposition due to lack of metrics standardization, absence of well-defined green manufacturing goals, and disregard for molecular complexity of drugs. This represented an opportunity for Boehringer Ingelheim to take leadership in our industry.
Already in 2015 we reinvigorated our Green Chemistry initiative by inventing the Green Aspiration Level (GAL) concept – a novel process performance metric that quantifies the environmental impact of producing a specific pharmaceutical agent while taking into account the complexity of the ideal synthetic process for producing the target molecule. This GAL metric enabled the pharmaceutical industry for the first time to assess the relative “greenness” of a process, in terms of waste, versus industry standards for the production process of any small chemical molecule pharmaceutical.
However, we became increasingly aware that GAL might not adequately reflect molecular complexity and thus not reward Green Chemistry-inspired innovation. Thus, recognizing the need for a harmonized Green Chemistry metric that will not only enable better measurement of “greenness” but also encourage innovation of greener processes, twelve large pharmaceutical firms under leadership of Boehringer Ingelheim’s researcher Dr. Frank Roschangar, joined efforts with well-known Professors Roger Sheldon (the inventor of the E factor) and Paul Anastas (the “father of Green Chemistry”), to evolve GAL into a metric that could catalyze innovation and reward the greenest drug manufacturing processes.
Based on research that substantially expanded on Boehringer Ingelheim’s earlier methodology [Green Chem. 2015, 17, 752–768, and Green Chem. 2017, 19, 281?285] and through the statistical analysis of 64 drug manufacturing processes, the Boehringer Ingelheim-led team recently formulated the improved, critically needed and unified green manufacturing measure, the innovation Green Aspiration Level (iGAL).
The new Green Chemistry metric iGAL, published in the high impact journal Green Chemistry, represents another major step forward in the field of Green Chemistry metrics.
What is IGAL ?
- iGAL is a useful, inspiring and easy-to-use innovation-driven green metric.
- It accurately captures the scientists’ impact of green process inventiveness and improvements.
- It is standardized, consistent and fair as it considers molecular complexity of pharmaceutical drugs.
In addition, iGAL allows simple analysis of process waste by using the Green Chemistry Innovation Scorecard web calculator, which was also created by Dr. Frank Roschangar and his team with the help of Manuel Henry, Head of Crystallization Support at Boehringer Ingelheim. This calculator clearly and effectively illustrates the impact of innovation on waste reduction during drug manufacturing.
Boehringer Ingelheim expects that industry-wide implementation of the new value-added rating system across all phases of development and commercial manufacturing will motivate efforts to significantly lower the environmental footprint not only at Boehringer Ingelheim but also across the pharmaceutical industry and its chemical supply chain.
Dr. Frank Roschangar is Director of Process Research & Global External Chemistry Management at Boehringer Ingelheim, Ridgefield, USA. In 2017 and 2018 he was twice elected co-chair of the ACS Green Chemistry Institute pharmaceutical roundtable, and organized the first roundtable meeting hosted by Boehringer Ingelheim in Ingelheim. He has been selected twice as judge for the US Green Chemistry Challenge Award program by the ACS.