GSK Reagent Selection Guides

GSK has developed a number of in-house guides and tools for use by their staff in order to influence their employees in their choice of chemicals and to endeavour to embed sustainability into everyday practice.

Most recently, GSK published reagent guides that rank commonly used reagents for fifteen different chemical transformations [1] (all of which are available in the supplementary information of the journal article). Each reagent was assessed on a number of criteria to provide an Environment, Health and Safety score, a Chemistry score (which assesses stoichiometry, work-up, co-reagents and other issues) and a resulting overall Greenness score. Although issues such as by-product formation and elemental sustainability are not incorporated, there are plans to include Reaction Mass Efficiency and other considerations in future to update these guides. The guides provide a sound and easy to access reference particularly for bench chemists to encourage use of greener reagents.

In this video, Helen Sneddon gives us an insight into the GSK reagent guides and the assessment criteria.