Ozonides As Drugs: What Will They Think of Next?
You know, I often think that I have too narrow a view of what kinds of structures can go into drug molecules. (That may come as worrisome statement for some past and present colleagues of mine, who...
View ArticleYou Don’t See Many Names Starting with “Tellura-“
When I wrote here about unknown compounds, using aza-steroids as examples, I apparently wasn’t thinking far enough afield. I noticed this new paper on a new class of tellura-steroids. I’ve no doubt...
View ArticleSelenium In a Drug Structure: Why Not?
You don’t see too many drugs with selenium in them, that’s for sure. It’s one of those elements that can be used to illustrate the Paracelsian doctrine that the dose makes the poison: selenium is an...
View ArticleTrouble With a Boron-Containing Drug Candidate
There have been all kinds of boronic acid-based enzyme inhibitors over the years, but they’ve been mostly locked in the spacious closet labeled “tool compounds”. That’s as opposed to drugs. After all...
View ArticleSilicon In Drug Molecules: Not Quite There
Now here’s a subject that most medicinal chemists have thought of at one point or another: why don’t I put a silicon into my compounds? Pretty much like carbon, at least when there’s only one of them,...
View ArticleThe Medical Periodic Table
Here’s the latest “medical periodic table”, courtesy of this useful review in Chemical Communications. Element symbols in white are known to be essential in man. The ones with a blue background are...
View ArticleWhy Not Bromine?
So here’s a question for the medicinal chemists: how come we don’t like bromoaromatics so much? I know I don’t, but I have trouble putting my finger on just why. I know that there’s a ligand efficiency...
View ArticleSilicon Stays in the Shadows
I like this review, but I’ve seen it before. Well, not this exact manuscript, but every few years it seems there’s another one with a similar title, something about “Incorporating Silicon Into Drug...
View ArticleSilicon In Drug Molecules, Revisited
Here’s an update to a post from last year about silicon in drug-like molecules. The Denmark group at Illinois has investigated a range of silicon-containing heterocycles, providing both synthetic...
View ArticleBiological Lanthanides, Weirdly
I hadn’t realized it, but there are some new elements that have been added to the “essential for biochemistry” list, and they’re a bit of a surprise. (I blogged about odd metals in biology a few years...
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