Painkillers from pine trees instead of oil
A team of scientists from the Department of Chemistry and the Institute of Sustainability at the University of Bath has found a way to make two of the world’s most common painkillers, paracetamol and ibuprofen, from a compound found in pine trees that is also a waste product of the paper industry.
It may not be common knowledge that the production of many common pharmaceuticals uses chemical precursors derived from petroleum, which presents a niche sustainability challenge as the world pursues a ‘net zero’ goal. The Bath research team has developed a method to produce a range of pharmaceutical precursors from biorenative β‑pinene, a component of turpentine that is a waste product in the paper industry (annual production >350,000 tonnes). They have successfully converted β‑pinene into two everyday painkillers, paracetamol and ibuprofen, which are produced annually in the order of 100,000 tonnes. They have also synthesised a number of other chemical precursors from turpentine, including 4‑HAP (4‑hydroxyacetophenone), which serves as the basic ingredient for drugs such as beta-blockers and the asthma inhalant salbutamol, as well as other substances widely used in perfumes and cleaning products. The researchers hope that this more sustainable “biorefinery” approach could replace the need for crude oil products in the chemical industry.
Dr Josh Tibbetts, research associate in the university’s Department of Chemistry, said: “Using petroleum to produce medicines is not sustainable — not only does it contribute to rising CO2 emissions, but it also causes dramatic price volatility as we are highly dependent on the geopolitical stability of countries with large petroleum reserves, and petroleum will only get more expensive. Instead of getting more oil out of the ground, we want to replace this with a ‘biorefinery’ model in the future. Our turpentine-based biorefinery model uses chemical by-products from the paper industry to produce a range of valuable, sustainable chemicals that can be used in a variety of applications from perfumes to paracetamol. Instead of putting chemicals into a large reactor to create separate batches of product, the process uses continuous flow reactors, which means production does not need to be interrupted and is easier to scale up. Although the process in its current form is more expensive than using petroleum-based raw materials, consumers may be willing to pay a slightly higher price for more sustainable medicines derived entirely from plants.”