Introducing Deuterium - to Make Drugs Have a Longer Effect

Deuterium has been the focus of pharmaceutical research for some years, because it can ensure that drugs are broken down 5, 10 or even 50 times more slowly. "We call this the kinetic isotope effect," explains Prof. Dr. Andreas Gansäuer of the Kekulé Institute for Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Bonn (Germany). The reason for this is that many reactions, including the degradation of active substances, do not occur spontaneously. They first need a slight "push", the activation energy. This is somewhat like getting a model car to roll over a hill: That too only works if the car has sufficient momentum.

The method developed has been used, for example, to produce deuterated precursors of the painkiller ibuprofen and the antidepressant venlafaxine. The authors are confident that it will be applied to many more pharmaceuticals in the future.

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Introducing deuterium Makes Drugs to Have a Longer Effect

Source: News medical life sciences