Pfizer and ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable Selection Guides


Pfizer developed an educational tool in the form of an electronic in-house Reagent Selection guide for use by medicinal chemists to assess greenness of their chemistry. This tool provides rapidly accessible information to select efficient green transformations by grading reagents using three criteria: greenness, utility and scalability, and is visually represented in the form of Venn diagrams. The tool/guide was donated to the ACS GCIPR for further development and expansion[1]

Following donation of the initial guides to the ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable, the collaborative team have reviewed, updated and expanded the supporting information and number of transformations, which include, ‘amide reduction’, ‘ester deprotection’ and ‘epoxidation’.  The consistent approach which includes up to date references, scaled up examples and a ‘green criteria’ section educates the reader to make an informed choice – ideally towards the most sustainable reagent. In keeping with the original guides, they still include the Venn diagram and list of reagents. Importantly, the online Reagent Guides are searchable and linked to allow easy navigation to external references, internal reagents etc. 

  1. K. Alfonsi, J. Colberg, P. J. Dunn, T. Fevig, S. Jennings, T. A. Johnson, P. H. Kleine, C. Knight, M. A. Nagy, D. A. Perry and M. Stefaniak, Green chemistry tools to influence a medicinal chemistry and research chemistry based organisation, Green Chem., 2008, 10, 31-36.