Tunley Engineering are working towards their mission to accelerate decarbonisation globally. Their recent white paper explores the ways in which synthetic biology can help decarbonise pharmaceuticals.
Introduction
The pharmaceutical industry is significantly more carbon intensive than many other industries, such as automobile manufacturing. Furthermore, with pharmaceuticals representing approximately 25% of the carbon emissions associated with the NHS, medicines provide an excellent opportunity for carbon reduction. The chemical synthesis of medicines often requires expensive reagents, catalysts with a high embodied carbon content or low relative abundance (e.g., precious metals and rare earths) and high temperatures/pressures, all necessitating high consumption of energy, therefore producing a lot of carbon. Biological processes, however, require lower temperatures (often 37C) and removes the need for expensive and unsustainable catalysts. Bioreactors are already used to make products such as insulin, however, many medicines have complex synthesis pathways, and are not currently found in nature.