islatravir

Merck/Codexis Magic: Biocatalytic Synthesis of Islatravir

By Michael Lambrecht We all knew process scientists were good, but the Merck and Codexis teams just took it to another level!  Unnatural nucleosides like Merck’s reverse transcriptase inhibitor islatravir (1, Figure 1) are well-known to be challenging to synthesize by traditional methods, as evidenced by several published chemical syntheses of this molecule requiring a…