Synthesis of nucleosides analogues using immobilized whole cells

JORGE TRELLES, LETICIA BENTANCOR, MARIANO GRASSELLI,, ELIZABETH LEWKOWICZ, AND ADOLFO IRIBARREN

Bariloche

Congreso; XXXIX Reunión anual SAIBBM; 2003

SAIBBM

Whole immobilized cells have been used as efficient biocatalysts in the production of many pharmaceutical compounds. Sugar and/or base modified nucleosides have been extensively employed in cancer and antiviral therapies and, more recently, for antisense strategies. Traditionally, nucleosides are prepared by chemical methods that often involve difficult, inefficient and time-consuming multistage processes. Microbial preparations of both natural and unnatural nucleosides are an alternative methodology, which offer regio and stereoselectivity and simple experimental conditions. Recently, we have demonstrated the high efficiency of immobilized E. coli BL21 for the synthesis of adenosine. The results showed that this biocatalyst maintained high activity for long periods both at 4ºC and 37ºC and previde good reuse capacity and high productivity. In this work the results obtened using different immovilized biocatalysts for the synthesis of nucleosides analogues with optimal yield are shown