Highly Enantioselective Reduction of a Small Heterocyclic Ketone: Biocatalytic Reduction of Tetrahydrothiophene-3-one to the Corresponding (R)-Alcohol

By leveraging enzyme evolution technologies, the enantioselectivity of a KetoREDuctase (KRED) towards the nearly spatially symmetrical ketone tetrahydrothiophene-3-one was increased from 63% ee to 99.3% ee. The biocatalytic process gives ( R )-tetrahydrothiophene-3-ol in one step from a commodity chemical and supplants the original multistep hazardous processes starting from the chiral pool. The biocatalytic process has been successfully scaled to 100 kg.