Abstract
Medicines are essential to human health but can also impact the aquatic and terrestrial environment after use by patients and release via excreta into wastewater. We highlight the need for a GREENER approach to identify and meet important environmental criteria, which will help reduce the impact of medicinal residues on the environment. These criteria include effect reduction by avoiding nontarget effects or undesirable moieties, exposure reduction via lower emissions or environmental (bio)degradability, no PBT (persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic) substances, and risk mitigation. With all of these criteria, however, patient health is of primary importance as medicines are required to be safe and efficacious for treating diseases. We discuss the feasibility of including these criteria for green by design active pharmaceutical ingredients in the process of drug discovery and development and which tools or assays are needed to accomplish this. The integrated GREENER approach can be used to accelerate discussions about future innovations in drug discovery and development.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 699-705 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Environmental Science and Technology Letters |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| Early online date | 23 Aug 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 13 Sept 2022 |
Bibliographical note
© 2022 American Chemical Society.Keywords
- criteria
- drug discovery and development
- environment
- pharmaceuticals
- sustainability
- water quality