Whole cells or isolated enzymes. Different strategies to prepare modified nucleosides

NÓBILE M.; MÉDICI R.; TAVERNA PORRO M.; GUDIÑO E.; IGLESIAS L.; LEWKOWICZ E.; MONTSERRAT J.; IRIBARREN A.

Berma

Congreso; XVII International round table on nucleosides, nucleotides and nucleic acids; 2006

In order to prepare modified nucleosides, biotransformations offer advantages over traditional chemistry such as high regio- and stereoselectivity, mild experimental conditions and green technologies. In particular, chemoenzymatic routes are useful tools for the synthesis of nucleosides on laboratory as well as industrial scales. Ribo- and arabino- purine nucleosides are frequent targets in new synthetic developments because of their applications as antivirals and antitumorals. Two routes are being carried out in our lab to prepare these kinds of compounds by means of chemoenzymatic procedures. One of them starts from pentoses, like ribose or arabinose, and makes use of isolated enzymes such as lipases, phosphopentomutase and purine nucleoside phosphorylase, consecutively. In the other route, purine nucleosides are prepared through whole cell biocatalysed reactions, starting from cheaper pyrimidine nucleosides. In addition, biocatalysed deamination of the nucleosides prepared following the approaches above mentioned generates the corresponding hydroxylated derivatives.