• Question: hi how do you make drugs that kill diseases?

    Asked by 232drug42 to Steven, Hannah on 16 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Hannah Bolt

      Hannah Bolt answered on 16 Nov 2016:

      Hi,

      I make drugs using some very simple chemistry! First I have to plan what I want to make and design the compounds, then I make them using organic chemistry.

      The drugs I make are made using ‘solid-phase’ synthesis. This means I take a solid bead and add liquid chemicals to it. It makes purification of my molecules very easy because at the end of the reaction I can wash away all the unwanted reagents and then remove my product from the solid bead.

      I don’t really know how well my drugs will work until I test them against parasites that cause the disease leishmaniasis, so I have to keep my fingers crossed that I’ll get some good results!

      Hannah

    • Photo: Steven Street

      Steven Street answered on 18 Nov 2016:

      Hi 232drug42,

      That’s a good question! After you’ve selected your target and designed some molecules that you think will work, you need to build them!

      Basically, there are two ways of doing this. Either you get nature to build them for you, and then extract them (these molecules are called natural products) or you can build them yourself, using synthetic chemistry.

      I’m a synthetic chemist, so I spend most of my time building new molecules to test as drugs! it took me 1 year to work out how to make my first new molecule, and now it takes about 2 weeks to build a new one from scratch.

      Steve

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