Building bio-Profiles for common catalytic reactions

In this work, we present a powerful approach for fast assessment of the potential biological impact of chemical processes on living organisms. This approach includes building bio-Profiles based on cytotoxicity data and calculating bio-Factors for chemical reactions. Bio-Profiles allow visual determination of substances with the highest and the lowest contributions to the “overall cytotoxicity” of a given chemical process, whereas bio-Factors indicate the quantitative change in the “overall cytotoxicity” during the process. This information provides the necessary initial description of the plausible biological impact of a given chemical reaction and can be used for subsequent optimization of the process from the viewpoint of toxicity of its components. To illustrate the proposed concept, measurements of biological activity were carried out for ca. thirty compounds in two cell lines and bio-Profiles were constructed for four practically relevant catalytic reactions (Suzuki cross-coupling, oxidative C–C coupling, the Friedel–Crafts reaction, and the Heck reaction). In addition, practical application of bio-Profiles was illustrated by the example of the Suzuki reaction and it showed the largest influence of aryl halides (X = Cl, Br, I), a modest influence of solvents and a small contribution of the catalyst to the overall toxicity profile.