• Question: can remedies from the past aid drug synthesis.

    Asked by sloth-savior to Aaron, David, Elaine, Sarah, Zoe on 17 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Zoe Roberts

      Zoe Roberts answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      Yes, very much so. Infact many of the drugs we have today are furthur advances on the remedies they used in the past.

    • Photo: Sarah Ashwood

      Sarah Ashwood answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      Yes, a lot of natural remedies that were used in the past have been investigated to work out what the active chemical it is. These chemicals are then developed to aid future medical advances.

    • Photo: David Foley

      David Foley answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      I’ll come at this from a slightly different angle. A lot of early remedies are natural products of plants and animal. The chemical structure of these natural products is often highly complex. The challenge of making these compounds in the lab has inspired (and frustrated!) many a synthetic chemist over the years (look at how long it took to make cholesterol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholesterol_total_synthesis). However along the way the have resulted in huge advances of our understanding of synthetic organic chemistry. These advances are now being routinely used in medicinal chemistry labs to synthesise the next generation of drugs!

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