The Early FDA
Here's a short video history of the FDA, courtesy of BioCentury TV. The early days, especially Harvey Wiley and the "Poison Squad", are truly wild and alarming by today's standards. But then, the products that were on the market back then were pretty alarming, too. . . (Source: In the Pipeline)
Source: In the Pipeline - August 28, 2014 Category: Chemists Tags: Regulatory Affairs Source Type: blogs
Drug Repurposing
A reader has sent along the question: "Have any repurposed drugs actually been approved for their new indication?" And initially, I thought, confidently but rather blankly, "Well, certainly, there's. . . and. . .hmm", but then the biggest example hit me: thalidomide. It was, infamously, a sedative and remedy for morning sickness in its original tragic incarnation, but came back into use first for leprosy and then for multiple myeloma. The discovery of its efficacy in leprosy, specifically erythema nodosum laprosum, was a complete and total accident, it should be noted - the story is told in the book Dark Remedy. A physicia...
Source: In the Pipeline - August 28, 2014 Category: Chemists Tags: Clinical Trials Source Type: blogs
The Smallest Drugs
Here is the updated version of the "smallest drugs" collection that I did the other day. Here are the criteria I used: the molecular weight cutoff was set, arbitrarily, at aspirin's 180. I excluded the inhaled anaesthetics, only allowing things that are oils or solids in their form of use. As a small-molecule organic chemist, I only allowed organic compounds - lithium and so on are for another category. And the hardest one was "Must be in current use across several countries". That's another arbitrary cutoff, but it excludes pemoline (176), for example, which has basically been removed from the market. It also gets rid of ...
Source: In the Pipeline - August 27, 2014 Category: Chemists Tags: Chemical News Source Type: blogs
Life Is Too Short For Some Journal Feeds
What scientific journals can you not be bothered to keep up with? I know, sometimes it's tempting to answer "all of them", but a well-informed chemist really should watch what comes out in the better ones. But how about the not-so-better ones? The "Life's too short" ones? Reading journals by RSS gives a person some perspective on signal-to-noise.
One problem is that Elsevier's RSS feeds are sort of perpetually hosed. Are they working now? I haven't checked in a while, because I finally gave up on them. And that means that I don't regularly look at Tetrahedron Letters or Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Letters, even th...
Source: In the Pipeline - August 27, 2014 Category: Chemists Tags: The Scientific Literature Source Type: blogs
Merging photoredox with nickel catalysis: Coupling of α-carboxyl sp3-carbons with aryl halides
Science Merging photoredox with nickel catalysis: Coupling of α-carboxyl sp3-carbons with aryl halides Zhiwei Zuo, Derek T. Ahneman, Lingling Chu, Jack A. Terrett, Abigail G. Doyle, and David W. C. MacMillan (Source: Organometallic Current)
Source: Organometallic Current - August 27, 2014 Category: Chemists Tags: Ni Catalyzed Photoredox Catalysis Source Type: blogs
