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We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

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Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#211

Post by autonoshitbox »

jijji wrote: post #186

favipiravir is alot cheaper to synthesize and is used as a drop in replacement for remdesivir all over asia... Good things to have on hand during this covid-19 pandemic (because you can't rely on hospitals to give it to you) are: 1) hydroxychloroquine sulfate taken orally 400 mg per day for a week ($180/kg on alibaba) 2) azithromycin taken orally 500 mg per day for a week ($150/kg on alibaba) 3) Camostat mesilate tak…

A drop-in replacement for something that barely just finished clinical trials. Ok.

Stop suggesting people buy dangerous drugs from Alibaba. This should be bannable.

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#212

Post by C4stor »

koboll wrote: post #161
kccqzy wrote: post #22

Remdesivir is an analog of adenosine, one of the four building blocks of RNA. Just look at the main structure and you'll agree they look similar. It turns out the mechanism of action of this drug is that it's supposed to be confused with adenosine, so that the viral RNA replication process uses remdesivir instead of adenosine, which later breaks the RNA†. Our body, or really, all biological processes can synthesize i…

This is such a great description. Compare how Wikipedia describes the same process [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine#Research ]: > The adenosine analog NITD008 has been reported to directly inhibit the recombinant RNA-dependent RNA polymerase of the dengue virus by terminating its RNA chain synthesis. This interaction suppresses peak viremia and rise in cytokines and prevents lethality in infected animals, ra…

And yet, 21 hours after making this remark, noone cared enough to edit the article to include the "great description".

Wikipedia isn't magical. If you don't care enough to edit it, it won't include the information you'd like to see.

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#213

Post by SkyBelow »

nitrogen wrote: post #195
oefrha wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientific articles on Wikipedia aren’t written for laymen, although some could be understood by laymen as a side effect. For example as a physicist/mathematician I expect precise and physically/mathematically accurate statements rather than hand-wavy analogues that the average Joe might be able to make sense of, and that’s how I edit. Now, it’s okay to also include more approachable explanations, but they’re not a m…

I know Wikipedia has evolved considerably from its original intent, but isn't one of the quintessential goals of an encyclopedia to have an approachable summary of every topic?

Wouldn't this be what the simple version is for? One is to be informative to people who know nothing, the other is to be informative to the people who want to learn about it at depth.

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#214

Post by Metacelsus »

aerovistae wrote: post #2

Really interesting getting a window into the world of professional chemistry. So impactful on all of us but so much more opaque. We see CS jokes/memes all over the place, even if only those who program get them, but we never see chem jokes, or only sparingly and rarely beyond a high school level.

>we never see chem jokes, or only sparingly and rarely beyond a high school level.

For biochemistry check out r/labrats

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#215

Post by Metacelsus »

foobarian wrote: post #205
Vaslo wrote: post #34

In my former life I was a graduate organic chemist, but I “quit” with a Masters. I loved Synthetic Chemistry as an undergrad and thought I wanted a PhD in. There were three lousy things (for me) about the career that made me bail. 1). So many syntheses have horrible yields just like this one. You’d start with grams of material to end up with micrograms. I loved solving these problems as an undergrad in books, but rea…

Something that is not obvious from article or posts in this thread, but seems to be taken for granted: how exactly do you know how much of some target molecule you created? The article for example mentions 1g of remdesivir, but that seems like a complicated chemical so how do they tell it apart from something very similar but different? Some kind of GCM or electron microscope?

NMR and mass spectrometry are two powerful analytical tools, both of which they used

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#216

Post by Metacelsus »

joyj2nd wrote: post #114

"liquid chromatography, is frequently used. On a small scale this is fine, but when kilograms of material are required the process becomes unwieldy." I did not understand this. liquid chromatography scales up quite well. There are other methods like Electorphoresis, salt precipitations etc., that don't.

>liquid chromatography scales up quite well

Not compared to recrystallization or distillation. Try running a column on 10kg scale and get back to me.

(I worked in an o-chem lab for 2 years in undergrad, and the biggest we could do was ~20 grams at once)

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#217

Post by a123b456c »

C4stor wrote: post #212
koboll wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a great description. Compare how Wikipedia describes the same process [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine#Research ]: > The adenosine analog NITD008 has been reported to directly inhibit the recombinant RNA-dependent RNA polymerase of the dengue virus by terminating its RNA chain synthesis. This interaction suppresses peak viremia and rise in cytokines and prevents lethality in infected animals, ra…

And yet, 21 hours after making this remark, noone cared enough to edit the article to include the "great description". Wikipedia isn't magical. If you don't care enough to edit it, it won't include the information you'd like to see.

Author called it a dumbed-down description. Are you sure that belongs on wikipedia?

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#218

Post by Metacelsus »

barkingcat wrote: post #18
fg6hr wrote: post #11

That's some really complex mess. How much do these chemists get paid?

If they don't have grants, $0. If they work in a lab for someone who has a grant, $0, but with credit on the papers (that's why there's 35 authors on the paper, 1 person got paid, the rest got name credit in the hopes that they get noticed by a commercial company wanting to monetize this process, so in the future they get their own gig). If they work in a commercial lab, maybe they make a little.

Usually grad students are paid. Not much (~$35000/yr) but they do get paid.

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#219

Post by Metacelsus »

aazaa wrote: post #175

> n-BuLi is short for n-butyllithium, which bursts into flame if exposed to oxygen or water. It looks like the author is overselling some of the dangers here. While you really don't want to dump n-BuLi into water, you have no reason to either. The problem child of the class to which n-BuLi belongs is t-BuLi. That will spontaneously ignite in air, whereas n-BuLi will not. There was a very high-profile case I believe a…

nBuLi is tame compared to tBuLi, I agree. But on large scale the reaction with air can generate enough heat to ignite. (And with humid air it's worse.)

Re: We Made One Gram Of Remdesivir

#220

Post by aaai »

koboll wrote: post #161
kccqzy wrote: post #22

Remdesivir is an analog of adenosine, one of the four building blocks of RNA. Just look at the main structure and you'll agree they look similar. It turns out the mechanism of action of this drug is that it's supposed to be confused with adenosine, so that the viral RNA replication process uses remdesivir instead of adenosine, which later breaks the RNA†. Our body, or really, all biological processes can synthesize i…

This is such a great description. Compare how Wikipedia describes the same process [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine#Research ]: > The adenosine analog NITD008 has been reported to directly inhibit the recombinant RNA-dependent RNA polymerase of the dengue virus by terminating its RNA chain synthesis. This interaction suppresses peak viremia and rise in cytokines and prevents lethality in infected animals, ra…

May be hard to understand for ppl. with no background, but that description includes the crucial bit of information that OPs "easy to grok" simplified description lacks:

> inhibit the [...] RNA polymerase of the [..] virus

If it would just simply stop RNA synthesis (eg. inhibit any RNA-polymerase) or if it would actually break RNA in general, it would kill HUMANS just as well!

The point of antiviral compounds is to selectively inhibit/kill mechanisms/components of the virus and not the human host... there's hundreds of thousands of antiviral and antibiotic compounds that are not very useful because they'd kill humans just as well or give them horrible cancers or god knows what else...

As the saying goes... "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

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