Gallou, Fabrice (2020) Sustainability as a trigger for innovation ! Chimia., 74. pp. 538-548.

Abstract

There is now not a single day without alarming news of climate change, or the unsustainable pace at which the world is growing. It is our responsibility, of each of us scientists especially, and collectively within our respective organizations, to change the culture, to offer disruptive options to dramatically revert the unsustainable practices, and to encourage these courageous changes. Around the end of 2010, We, at Novartis, actively started to tackle the environmental issues rightly raised by the legislation. Of paramount importance to us was the improper usage of toxic substances, and more specifically of the highly common polar aprotic solvents flagged to be reprotoxic. The REACH legislation and its Substance of Very High Concern arm especially prompted us to act in a strategic way.[1] About a dozen of projects of various levels of ambition and scope were started, either internally, or externally with chemical suppliers and vendors, along with academic collaborators. We investigated the potential of supercritical media ,[2] evaluated various amphoteric solvents in an unbiased manner (collaboration Fribourg), promoted the development of more desirable alternatives ,[3] and more generally as will be explained in the following manuscript on developing a toolbox of chemistry in bulk water. For this latter approach, we were obviously strengthening our arsenal of biocatalytic tools, and complemented this aspect with a de novo toolbox of surfactant-mediated chemistry.

Item Type:	Article
Date Deposited:	22 Sep 2020 00:45
Last Modified:	22 Sep 2020 00:45
URI:	https://oak.novartis.com/id/eprint/42215