The development of base metal catalysts for the synthesis of pharmaceutically relevant compounds continues an important goal of chemical research. For instance, reductive amination is a widely common manner to make carbon-nitrogen bonds for the pharmaceutical application. However, this type of process require catalysts based on noble metals, couples ammonia or other amines with carbonyl compounds and then with H2. We have recently developed a class of non-noble cobalt nanoparticles that catalyze this reaction across a very broad range of substrates, including complex molecules of pharmaceutical interest. Simply, the cobalt was first embedded in a metal-organic framework (MOF), which then transformed into a graphitic shell through a heating process. The obtained catalysts were active for synthesis of primary, secondary, tertiary, and N-methylamines. The developed catalyst has several great features such efficiency, reliability, good stability, scalability, and some others.