Comparative assessment of heterogeneous and homogeneous Suzuki-Miyaura catalytic reactions using bio-Profiles and bio-Factors

• bio-Profiles and bio-Factors allow fast estimation of toxic effects of chemical reactions. • Supported palladium catalysts have an advantage over soluble catalysts in terms of toxicity. • The negative environmental impact of supported catalysts is related to their preparation. • Toxic effects of catalyst preparation can be reduced by choosing harmless solvents and avoiding toxic byproducts. Transition metals are essential for most catalytic systems in fine organic synthesis. The usage of transition metals has traditionally raised concerns about their toxicity and potential environmental pollution problems. In this context, the issue of preference for supported catalysts, which can be easily removed from the reaction mixture, over metal complex catalysts is of significant relevance. In this work, we used bio-Profiles and bio-Factors of chemical reactions to assess the impact of catalyst type on the toxicity of a reaction system in the practically important Suzuki-Miyaura reaction. The supported catalysts had noticeably lower cytotoxicity than soluble metal complex catalysts. However, the combined effect of supported catalysts on the environment can depend on their preparation procedure and may have a noticeable “neglected” biological impact. Both types of catalysts made no significant contribution to the “overall toxicity” of the systems studied, while common and typically ignored byproducts demonstrated significantly higher “overall” biological influence. In the present study, we describe how to use bio-Profiles in order to visualize and analyze the biological properties of different types of catalytic reactions.