Recent trends in synthetic enzymatic cascades promoted by alcohol dehydrogenases

Alcohol dehydrogenases have fascinated chemists over the span of a few decades to catalyze oxidation and reduction reactions and have been increasingly incorporated as biocatalysts in scaled-up industrial processes for the production of valuable chiral compounds under mild and environmentally friendly conditions. In this review, we discuss recent advances on alcohol dehydrogenases coupled in cascade reactions with other enzyme classes, chemocatalysts, or organocatalysts to obtain high value–added products. The examples include deracemization processes for the synthesis of chiral diols and amino alcohols, whole-cell and co-expression systems, and chemoenzymatic and organoenzymatic cascades, with a vision for future developments.