Scientists find new way to make drugs

The Indian Panorama - Newspaper - Logo

MELBOURNE (TIP): In a breakthrough, researchers have developed a revolutionary new way to manufacture natural chemicals and used it to assemble a scarce anti-inflammatory drug with potential to treat cancer and malaria. The advance could lead to new and cheaper ways to produce rare drugs in large quantities. “We took small molecules and clipped them together like Lego,” said lead researcher professor Michael Sherburn, from the Australian National University (ANU).

“The building blocks are carefully designed in such a way that the first reaction generates a product perfectly primed for the second. It’s quite magical. This means you can efficiently build large and complex molecules,” said Sherburn. Medicines of this type have traditionally been made in a cumbersome way. Chemists take a related molecule and renovate it. This is a lengthy process, with unwanted structural features being ripped out and replaced. “This leads to a lot of waste,” Sherburn said. The group trialled their innovative new method by making pseudopterosin, a powerful antiinflammatory and analgesic drug, which is currently only available in tiny quantities extracted from fan coral found in the Bahamas.

The work began as blue-sky research, with the researchers trying to work out a way to make supposedly impossible molecules of crossconjugated hydrocarbons. Before trying the experiments the team ran simulations on the Raijin supercomputer, which indicated that their method had potential. “Ours is an empowering and enabling technique, allowing a smarter and faster way to make important substances,” said Dr Chris Newton, who did the research in the laboratory as a PhD student. “The pseudopterosin synthesis is the tip of the iceberg. We are well on the way to efficient syntheses of other important drugs. “There is a potential for industrial-scale manufacture, too, which will take the pressure off species which are being harvested for drugs,” Newton said.

34 Comments

  1. Hey very cool website!! Man .. Beautiful .. Amazing .. I will bookmark your site and take the feeds also…I am happy to find so many useful info here in the post, we need work out more techniques in this regard, thanks for sharing. . . . . .

  2. Thanks for your personal marvelous posting! I genuinely enjoyed reading it, you happen to be a great author.I will make certain to bookmark your blog and will often come back someday. I want to encourage continue your great work, have a nice evening!

  3. Thank you for the sensible critique. Me & my neighbor were just preparing to do a little research on this. We got a grab a book from our area library but I think I learned more from this post. I’m very glad to see such fantastic information being shared freely out there.

  4. I’m impressed, I have to say. Really rarely do I encounter a weblog that’s both educative and entertaining, and let me tell you, you’ve hit the nail on the head. Your concept is outstanding; the difficulty is one thing that not sufficient people are speaking intelligently about. I am very comfortable that I stumbled throughout this in my seek for something regarding this.

  5. of course like your web-site but you have to check the spelling on several of your posts. Many of them are rife with spelling issues and I in finding it very troublesome to tell the reality on the other hand I¦ll surely come back again.

  6. Attractive element of content. I simply stumbled upon your web site and in accession capital to claim that I get actually enjoyed account your blog posts. Any way I will be subscribing to your feeds and even I fulfillment you access consistently fast.

  7. Have you ever thought about writing an e-book or guest authoring on other websites? I have a blog centered on the same information you discuss and would really like to have you share some stories/information. I know my readers would value your work. If you are even remotely interested, feel free to shoot me an email.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.