Sustainable Asymmetric Synthesis of Diltiazem Precursor Enabled by Recombinant Escherichia coli Whole Cells Co-Expressing an Engineered Ketoreductase and Glucose Dehydrogenase.

As a key synthetic intermediate of the cardiovascular drug diltiazem, methyl (2R,3S)-3-(4-methoxyphenyl) glycidate ((2R,3S)-MPGM) (1) is accessible via the ring closure of chlorohydrin (3S)-methyl 2-chloro-3-hydroxy-3-(4-methoxyphenyl)propanoate ((3S)-2). We report the efficient reduction of methyl 2-chloro-3-(4-methoxyphenyl)-3-oxo-propanoate (3) to (3S)-2 using an engineered enzyme SSCR M2 possessing 4.5-fold improved specific activity, which was obtained through the structure-guided site-saturation mutagenesis of the ketoreductase SSCR by reliving steric hindrance and undesired interactions. With the combined use of the co-expression fine-tuning strategy, a recombinant E. coli (pET28a-RBS-SSCR M2 /pACYCDuet-GDH), co-expressing SSCR M2 and glucose dehydrogenase, was constructed and optimized for protein expression. After optimizing the reaction conditions, whole-cell-catalyzed complete reduction of industrially relevant 300 g/L of 3 was realized, affording (3S)-2 with 99% ee and a space-time yield of 519.1 g∙L -1 ∙d -1 , representing the highest record for the biocatalytic synthesis of (3S)-2 reported to date. The E-factor of this biocatalytic synthesis was 24.5 (including water). Chiral alcohol (3S)-2 generated in this atom-economic synthesis was transformed to (2R,3S)-MPGM in 95% yield with 99% ee. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.