Five new candidate drugs are revealed in the ACS New Orleans meeting
The ACS National Spring Meeting took place 7-11 April in New Orleans.
As is traditional for the Medicinal Chemistry Division, structures of candidate drugs get revealed in the “First-Time Disclosures” session.
This year’s entries are:
More about how where these drugs discovered:http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i16/Five-New-Drug-Candidates-Structures.html
Kalydeco: The most important new drug of 2012
Kalydeco, a drug for cystic fibrosis, is the most important new drug of 2012 according to Forbes magazine and was developed by Vertex pharmaceuticals with seed funding from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
Cystic Fibrosis is a genetic disorder that results in scarring (fibrosis) and cyst formation within the pancreas, lungs, liver, and intestines.
Kalydeco’s chemical structure, costing $294,000 per patient per year
Kalydeco, given alone, will only help a few thousand patients the world over. Like other drugs for very rare diseases, its price is very high: $294,000 per patient per year.
Though its chemical structure could be routinely made by a synthetic chemist, it is covered by a patent so it is illegal to make in a lab.
The efforts to cure cystic fibrosis were spearheaded by a discovery from Francis Collins, later famous for heading the Human Genome Project and then the National Institutes of Health, who discovered the gene that, when mutated, causes cystic fibrosis 23 years ago. Kalydeco is the first drug to directly affect the defects caused by these mutations, leading to improvements in patients’ lung function.
366 Days: The Year in Science
Read below the Science Review of 2012 by Nature Magazine, with Greece making it to the top 22 “leading science nations” with 1% of the ‘most cited papers’!
Also, read on Science Magazine’s Breakthrough of the Year 2012 (Higgs Boson) and the runners-up: Genome Engineering, Curiosity Landing, Bionics, Eggs from Stem Cells, Encode, X-ray laser advances and more!
http://www.sciencemag.org/site/special/btoy2012/
2012 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for Life is Chemistry.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 4,900 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 8 years to get that many views.
The Chemistry of Euro banknotes
Europium(III) oxide, alongside other chemicals, is phosphorescent and is used in the anti-counterfeiting details in Euro banknotes.
Europium (symbol Eu) is one of the rare earth elements and belongs to the class of “lanthanides”.
Most of the trivalent rare earth elements are luminescent. This means that they can be excited by shining a light of a particular wavelength at them. When the ions relax again, they emit light – of a different wavelength. That is luminescence.
Euro notes luminesce in the red, green and blue (excited by 254 nm). The red light is clearly linked to europium and most likely to a Eu3+-β-diketone complex.
ChemMatters: Demystifying Everyday Chemistry for high school students
ChemMatters is a magazine for high school students and high school teachers published by the Education Division of the American Chemical Society.
The magazine, which appears four times a year, contains articles that feature real-world applications of chemistry concepts introduced in the classroom. Latest issues cover themes such as the application of nanotechnology, great discoveries in chemistry, and the science behind weather folklore.
The site provides a Teacher’s guide, videos, material for the classroom and more.
Check out the ChemMatters web site for the latest issue!
View the lastest Episode on ChemMatters: “Episode 10: Graphene: The Next Wonder Material?” on carbon allotropes and the applications of graphene.
Happy Halloween! (with a fullerene twist)
(Image by Fabiola Barrios Landeros, carved by Ivan Tubert Brohman)
The 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been won by Harold W. Kroto, Robert F. Curl and Richard E. Smalley for their discovery in 1985 of a new form of carbon, in which the atoms are arranged in hollow spheres like this pumpkin! The new form was named Buckminsterfullerene, after the architect Buckminster Fuller who designed geodesic domes in the 1960′s.
A fullerene is any molecule composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid or tube. Spherical fullerenes are also called buckyballs, and they resemble the balls used in soccer. Cylindrical ones are called carbon nanotubes or buckytubes.
- Structure of a fullerene. (Source: Wikipedia)
- Carbon nanotube. Click on the image for an animation. (Image by Evi Gkeka)
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2012… explained
The Nobel prize in Physics 2012 was jointly awarded yesterday to Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland “for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems”.
Haroche and Wineland showed with real experiments of photons that it is possible for a quantum system to exist in two states at the same time. Originally, this was proposed by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schroedinger (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1933) within the quantum theory framework. The fact that a photon or an atom can exist in two states at the same time can have practical applications in life, i.e. in the quantum computer. Today’s computers store information in bits, which can have the value of 0 or 1 only. In quantum computing, a bit can exist in 0 and 1 at the same time (qubit), allowing for parallel computations at astronomical speeds. The quantum computer might revolutionize our lives the way computer have changed the way we live in the past century.
The Chemistry and Physics of Tennis
Tennis has grown to be my favorite sport, so I found this great YouTube video of Dr. Ainissa Ramirez from Yale University explaining the science behind tennis:
Basically, modern rackets are high tech composits of carbon fibers embedded in epoxy (glue), which give them high strength and low weight. The most expensive strings are made of cow gut, but most commonly nylon is used, which is a flexible polymer.
- Nylon, a synthetic polymer used for tennis racket strings.
Strings hit the ball and create topspin, which makes the ball fall sooner than a ball without top spin. This effect is called the “Magnus effect“. This is what happens to a ball with topspin: while the ball is rotaitng, a thin layer or air around it is also rotating with it. That means that the velocity of air below it is faster than the velocity of air above it, causing it to fall sooner on the ground. That’s why you have to use top spin with your balls if you want to be too fast for your opponent.
Venus Williams usually hits a 1,200 rpm ball and Rafa Nadal 3,600 rpms. That’s faster than a revolving washing machine:-)
After reading some tennis science, I hope you agree that knowing a little bit about the chemistry and physics of tennis can really improve you as a player…! 
The Chemistry of Love
I was sitting in the lobby of my accountant’s office, flipping absentmindedly through a magazine when she walked in. I’ve never had a visceral reaction as when I saw her walk through that door. There was just something about her; I felt head over heels… My heart started racing and I had butterflies in my stomach…
This is the amazing time when you are truly love-struck. With an irresistible cocktail of chemicals, our brain entices us to fall in love. But is it really us or is it yet another nature’s trick to keep our species alive?
Scientists agree that there are three stages and processes in love:
Stage 1 – Attraction
: Dopamine and Adrenaline
When you fall in love, your brain starts sending signals before you can even blink. Your heart races and palms sweat: adrenaline is getting released from neurons. Then, when you are close to your sweetheart, dopamine is released, which triggers euphoria and feelings of bliss, increased energy, increased energy, less need for sleep or food, and focused attention on your new relationship. Phenylethylamine (PEA) is the chemical responsible for releasing adrenaline and dopamine. Biologically speaking, with the combination of dopamine, adrenaline, and PEA in your body, you’re experiencing something similar to a cocaine high. And it doesn’t matter whether you just met this *special* person or you ‘ve known them for ages; these love signals can be released at any time. Actually, no, not at any time. Only when mother nature thinks the timing is right** (see below).
Stage 2 – Lust: Testosterone kicks in
Testosterone
That is about the time that androgens and estrogens kick in. Estrogens and androgens are steroids, which are the female and male sex hormones, respectively. Testosterone is the sex hormone in both male and females, which is what gives us libido and sex drive. This hormone is elevated when we are in love. This makes sense as you’re most concerned about sex when it’s most likely to result in reproduction. Some people argue that this Stage precedes Stage 1, but it’s up to you to decide
Stage 3 – Attachment: Oxytocin, the love hormone
In the long run, two other hormones make their headway when emotionally involved: the “hormones of attachment”, oxytocin and vasopressin.
Oxytocin. Notice something? As we go down the love chain, the molecules appear more complex; sort of like love-life!
Oxytocin is a hormone stored in the brain. When the hormone is released in the brain, it results in feelings of attachment and bonding. It has been found that oxytocin gets released at orgasm, which is why couples feel much closer to one another after they have had sex. Oxytocin is also released at childbirth and is partly responsible for the strong bond between mum and baby (actually oxytocin has a Greek root: “οξυτοκίνη”, which means “quick birth”). So, if you feel the urge for a stay-at-home movie night to cuddle with your beau, it may be oxytocin at work.
Vasopressin is another important hormone when it comes to relationships. Scientists studied the prairie vole, which is known to be monogamous and to express vasopressin like humans. When the researchers introduced vasopressin receptors to the “meadow vole”, the promiscuous cousin of the prairie vole, these playboys reformed their ways and fixated on one female, choosing to mate with only her – even when other females tried to tempt them!!
Wondering why some people find it hard to get emotionally involved or committed?
Some people might be less prone to form stable relationships because they might be not express as many “oxytocin or vasopressin receptors” (proteins that take up oxytocin or vasopressin) in their brains. Thus, some people are not that sensitive to the “commitment hormones” oxytocin and vasopressin. Experiments in animals showed that if you remove the oxytocin or vasopressin receptors, these animals cannot form strong bonds with each other any more.
Timing is important. The perfect partner can sit right next to you at a party, and you might not notice him or her if you’re too busy at work, enmeshed in another relationship, or otherwise preoccupied. But if you’ve just moved to a new city, recovered from an unsatisfying love affair, begun to make enough money to raise a family, are suffering through a difficult experience, or have a good deal of spare time, you are ripe to fall in love.
So love appears to all be yet another one of nature’s traits:
Romantic love evolved to enable you to focus your energy on just one person at a time, conserving time and energy. The sex drive evolved to get you out there looking for partners. Attachment, the feeling of security you can feel with a long-term partner, evolved to help you stay together long enough to raise kids.
