My Shopping List
Some time ago I wrote about some atoms that I wish I could use. There are still other molecular fragments that Nature has neglected to provide, though, and I’m adding to the wish list: First off, I’d...
View ArticleArsenic, Patents, and the World
As I was mentioning the other day, the latest issue of Nature Medicine has the details on a story that doesn’t, on the face of it, do the industry any credit. About twenty years ago, there were reports...
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One For the Brave
I was interested to see a recent paper in Organic Letters on a class of compounds I’d never seen before: 1,2-dihydro-1,2-azaborines. There’s the structure, in case that doesn’t immediately call...
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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...
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Selenium 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...
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Trouble 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,...
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The 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...
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Silicon 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...
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Silicon 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...
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Biological 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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