Original technologies that result in high quality output with a concern for environment management

The “Enzyme method,” a synthetic procedure using enzymes, is considered to be the most suitable to green chemistry, environment-harmonizing manufacturing, because it produces very few by-products thanks to various enzymic selectivities.
We have discovered our own enzymes, such as hydrolases and oxydoreductases, by various screenings, and have been developing research to apply them to chiral technologies including asymmetric hydrolysis reactions and asymmetric reduction reactions.

For example, by use of a new unprecedented hydrolase (lactonase), we were the first to succeed with the industrialization of D-pantolactone with enzymatic method, an important optically active intermediate of D-calcium pantothenate.
Compared with conventional chemical methods, this enzyme method produces material of high optical purity with no by-products and very few environmental burdens.
This achievement was granted The Chemical Society of Japan Award for Technological Development for 2000.