Hydrogen-Borrowing Alcohol Bioamination with Coimmobilized Dehydrogenases

The amination of alcohols is an important transformation in chemistry. The redox‐neutral (i.e., hydrogen‐borrowing) asymmetric amination of alcohols is enabled by the combination of an alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) with an amine dehydrogenase (AmDH). In this work, we enhanced the efficiency of hydrogen‐borrowing biocatalytic amination by co‐immobilizing both dehydrogenases on controlled porosity glass Fe^III ion‐affinity beads. The recyclability of the dual‐enzyme system was demonstrated (5 cycles) with total turnover numbers of >4000 and >1000 for ADH and AmDH, respectively. A set of (S)‐configured alcohol substrates was aminated with up to 95 % conversion and >99 % ee (R). Preparative‐scale amination of (S)‐phenylpropan‐2‐ol resulted in 90 % conversion and 80 % yield of the product in 24 h.