Project has designs on artificial enzymes for drugs and plastics

The Bionexgen project, which involves 17 partners, including BASF, aims to design artificial enzymes to direct raw materials to form the precise products needed for new drugs, plastics and other chemicals.

‘One of the keys to this is selectivity,’ explained project coordinator Kirk Mason of Manchester University, one of 11 research institutions involved in the €7.8m (£6.7m) project.

Most industrial chemical reactions depend on catalysts to force the components to react, but most large, biologically active compounds have more than one possible form and industrial catalysts typically can’t make one form instead of another.

‘Enzymes are nature’s catalysts, but they act like templates, forcing the components into particular shapes and making them join together,’ Mason explained. ‘It’s that exquisite selectivity that we’re trying to copy.’

Enzymes also make reactions work at room temperature and pressure — using solvents such as water — rather than the extreme conditions and sometimes hazardous solvents needed by industrial processes.