Household PET waste can be chemically recycled into key components for anti-cancer drugs, researchers report.
A major scientific advance has shown that everyday plastic waste can be transformed into chemical building blocks used in anti-cancer medicines.
Common PET materials, including bottles and textiles, can be recycled not only mechanically but also through chemical recycling, a process that breaks long polymer chains into monomers and other high-value compounds suitable for pharmaceutical use.(1✔ ✔Trusted Source
From Plastic Waste to Pharmaceutical Precursors: PET Upcycling Through Ruthenium Catalyzed Semi-Hydrogenation
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Recycled #PET #plastic can be chemically converted into salicylic acid precursors-key building blocks for drugs like #aspirin, with yields exceeding 80% in lab-scale reactions.
#greenpharma #plastictomedicine #sustainabledrugs #chemicalrecycling #cancertherapy #medindia
Turning Plastic Waste into Valuable Chemical Intermediates
Published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, researchers discovered that by using a ruthenium-catalysed semi-hydrogenation process, PET waste could be depolymerised into a valuable chemical, ethyl-4-hydroxymethyl benzoate (EHMB).
From PET Waste to Essential Drug Components
Remarkably, EHMB serves as a key intermediate for synthesising several important compounds, including the blockbuster anticancer drug Imatinib, Tranexamic acid, the base for medication that helps the blood to clot, and the insecticide Fenpyroximate.
Environmental Advantages Over Fossil-Based Production
Currently these types of medication are created using fossil-derived feedstock, often using hazardous reagents producing significant waste. This ground-breaking research offers substantial environmental benefits compared to conventional industrial methods for producing EHMB as confirmed by a comparative hot-spot analysis in a streamlined life cycle assessment approach, this means quickly pinpointing the parts of a product’s life cycle that cause the most environmental impact so it’s known where improvements will matter most.
Additionally, researchers discovered that EHMB can be converted into a new and recyclable polyester.
Advancing Circular Economy Through Chemical Upcycling
Lead Author of the paper, Dr Amit Kumar from the School of Chemistry at St Andrews, said: “We are excited by this discovery, which reimagines PET waste as a promising new feedstock for generating high-value APIs (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients) and agrochemicals. Although chemical recycling is a key strategy for building a circular economy, many current technologies lack strong economic feasibility. By enabling the upcycling of plastic waste into premium products instead of reproducing the same class of plastics, such processes could meaningfully accelerate the transition to a circular economy.”
Catalyst Performance and Industrial Relevance
The lead of the collaborative partner organisation, TU Delft in the Netherlands, Professor Evgeny Pidko, said: “For catalytic upcycling to become practical, the catalyst must operate efficiently at low loadings and maintain activity over long periods. All catalysts eventually deactivate, so understanding when and how this happens is critical to pushing turnover numbers to levels relevant for real applications. In this study, we combined detailed kinetic and mechanistic analysis to understand catalyst behaviour under the reaction conditions and used this knowledge to optimize the system towards record turnover numbers of up to 37,000. This emphasizes the importance of fundamental mechanistic insights to optimize catalyst durability and overall process efficiency.”
Implications for Sustainable Pharmaceutical Manufacturing
Dr Benjamin Kuehne and Dr Alexander Dauth from collaborative partner organisation, the chemical and pharmaceutical company Merck KGaA, said: “Pharmaceutical manufacturing generates substantial amounts of waste per kilogram of product, highlighting the urgent need for innovative sustainable chemical processes and raw materials with reduced environmental footprints.”
Reference:
- From Plastic Waste to Pharmaceutical Precursors: PET Upcycling Through Ruthenium Catalyzed Semi-Hydrogenation – (https://chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv/article-details/6823b289927d1c2e669d3033)
Source-University of St. Andrews