Martina Letizia Contente

Prof. Dr. Martina Letizia Contente

The Biotechnology Group committee is very pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2025 RSC Felix Franks Biotechnology Medal is Prof. Dr. Martina Letizia Contente of the Department of Food, Environmental and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Milan, Italy. 

Martina receives the award – the 7th in the series - in recognition of her internationally groundbreaking contributions to Chemical Biotechnology with a particular focus on biocatalysis for the sustainable production of high-value chemicals, including bioactive molecules. Martina earned her MSc in Pharmacy in 2011 and her PhD in Medicinal Chemistry in 2015, both from the University of Milan. Following her doctorate, she was a Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher in Chemistry at University College Dublin, and subsequently held a series of research fellowships — including a prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship — at the University of Nottingham. After a brief period at the University of Bern, where she worked on a Roche-funded project, she returned to the University of Milan. There, she was appointed Assistant Professor in 2021 and has served as Associate Professor since 2024.

Martina’s recent research focuses on minimizing waste in chemical processes by leveraging enzymes under continuous flow conditions. Central to her work is enzyme immobilization, which enhances catalyst stability and broadens synthetic applicability. She has achieved the sustainable synthesis of diverse compounds — including pharmaceutical and food ingredients, nutraceuticals, and cosmetic agents — using various enzyme classes, with unprecedented yields and reaction times (Green Chem. 2019; J. Flow Chem. 2020; Green Chem. 2022; ChemSusChem 2025).

A notable milestone was the introduction of a single-point mutation (S11C) in a novel acyl transferase, which enabled a highly efficient and sustainable pathway for synthesizing thioesters and bulky amides — a breakthrough in green chemistry (Nature Catal. 2020).

Martina’s work directly addresses the global need for more efficient and sustainable chemical synthesis. While enzymes offer inherent selectivity, their immobilization boosts protein stability, enabling catalyst reuse across multiple cycles. By integrating biocatalysis with flow chemistry, she has developed clean, highly-performing, in continuous approaches to produce synthetically challenging molecules. 

This strategy has led to the preparation of bioactive compounds (J. Agric. Food Chem. 2022; Catal. Sci. Technol. 2023), human metabolites (ChemBioChem 2022), and pharmaceuticals (Green Chem. 2022, EJOC 2025), surpassing conventional methods in both efficiency and selectivity.

Although enzymes are recognized as a “hot topic” in synthesis, limitations in stability and cost-efficiency hinder their broader use. Martina’s focus on enzyme stabilization and process intensification has made biocatalysis more viable for industrial application, firmly positioning enzymes as essential tools in modern sustainable chemistry.

Martina will be presented with the award at the RSC Meeting “Biotransformations III” to be held at the RSC, Burlington House London, 16 December 2025