Smarter Routes, Smaller Footprints: Award-Winning Green Chemistry in Pharma

Creating tomorrow’s medicines without compromising tomorrow’s planet lies in rethinking chemistry from the ground up. Join us as we celebrate the recipients of the Peter J. Dunn Award, whose groundbreaking process innovations demonstrate that greener chemistry can deliver not only performance but measurable gains in efficiency, safety, scalability, and sustainability.

Amgen is recognized for reinventing the manufacturing process for Olpasiran, a GalNAc-conjugated siRNA therapeutic, through the application of green chemistry principles. The team redesigned key stages of the synthesis, from starting materials and GalNAc ligand production to the final conjugation step, replacing hazardous solvents and reagents with safer, lower-risk alternatives while maintaining or improving yields. Successfully demonstrated at multi-kilogram scale (>30 kg), the optimized process reduced E-factors by up to 37% and cut solvent use and waste generation by more than 25% at peak production. This work illustrates how strategic process innovation can reduce environmental impact while enabling robust, large-scale manufacturing of next-generation RNA therapeutics.

Bristol Myers Squibb is recognized for transforming the manufacturing route for the Repotrectinib (BMS-986472) API through an ambitious redesign grounded in green chemistry. By combining retrosynthetic innovation with process optimization, the team increased overall yield fourfold (11% to 45%), reduced isolation steps from ten to six, and completely eliminated dioxane and all halogenated solvents and reagents. A second-generation biocatalytic process for a key starting material further advanced the use of renewable, low-impact technologies. Together, these innovations reduced process mass intensity, energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, water use, cycle time, and manufacturing costs by 43%-73%, demonstrating that bold process redesign can simultaneously improve sustainability, operational performance, and pharmaceutical manufacturing.

This ACS Webinar is moderated by John Tucker of Neurocrine Biosciences and co-produced with the ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable. As part of ACS’ ongoing celebration of our 150th anniversary, this month we highlight innovation in chemistry, from supporting research to advancing scientific publications we are excited to imagine what the next 150 years of innovation in science might look like. Celebrate with us at www.acs.org/150

What You Will Learn

• How green chemistry principles translate into real-world manufacturing, improving sustainability while maintaining or increasing process performance
• The strategies behind award-winning process redesigns, from retrosynthetic innovation and biocatalysis to safer solvents and streamlined synthetic routes
• How measurable sustainability metrics can drive better decision-making in pharmaceutical development including Process Mass Intensity, E-factor, energy use, waste generation, and greenhouse gas emissions

Event Details

• Thursday, August 13, 2026 @ 2-3:30pm ET
• Free to attend
• Slides will be available on day of the webinar

Additional Resources

• ACS GCIPR Industry Awards – An annual awards program to recognize green chemistry innovations that advance sustainability in the pharma industry and allied industrial partners.
• Tools for Innovation – Free high quality tools and metrics to help scientists and engineers make better decisions about chemical selection and route and process design.

Co-Produced With

ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable