Environmentally Benign Synthesis of Anticancer Drug Lenalidomide

Lenalidomide, an anticancer drug, was synthesized using greener reaction conditions. Unlike conventional methods that utilize egregious organic solvents and expensive reagents or catalysts, our approach employs ecofriendly reaction media, cost-effective reagents, and simplified downstream processing. These modifications lead to improved green chemistry metrics, as reflected by a favorable complete E-factor (cEF) and process mass intensity (PMI). The optimized process has been successfully scaled up, affording an overall isolated yield of 62%.