• Question: Have you ever invented a new chemical?

    Asked by anon-196552 to Sebastian, Paddy, Lee, Jennifer, Fiona, Eleanor on 1 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Fiona Scott

      Fiona Scott answered on 1 Mar 2019:

      Yes. I have made a few dozen brand new drug-like molecules in my PhD project over the last couple of years – or at least I think I have because I can’t find any record of anyone else having made them when I look through databases of scientific papers. It’s very exciting doing those searches and getting “zero results” back because then you can be pretty sure that what is in your sample vial has never been made by a chemist before!

    • Photo: Eleanor Senior

      Eleanor Senior answered on 1 Mar 2019:

      I haven’t made any chemicals myself but hopefully my PhD work is going to lead to the creation of a new vaccine which may include some new chemicals.

    • Photo: Paddy Sudhakar

      Paddy Sudhakar answered on 1 Mar 2019:

      Well – not really – since I am not involved directly in inventing / discovering new chemicals.

    • Photo: Lee Steinberg

      Lee Steinberg answered on 2 Mar 2019:

      I don’t really do chemistry in a laboratory where you make molecules into different molecules. Instead all the chemistry I do is on a computer. Recently, there has been a lot of work where people are looking at using computers to design totally new chemicals, which we could then give to the chemists in the laboratory to actually make. My favourite one of these methods is basically evolution applied to chemistry: you take a known molecule, and you change it slightly, maybe adding a new piece on the end. You then use a computer to calculate if it is a ‘better’ molecule.

    • Photo: Jennifer Harris

      Jennifer Harris answered on 3 Mar 2019:

      I haven’t made any chemicals but hopefully my PhD work is going to be published, showing how the vessels in your body can be targeted to help stop cancer from growing and help boost our immune system to fight the cancer.

    • Photo: Sebastian Cosgrove

      Sebastian Cosgrove answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      Yes! During my PhD I came up with a new reaction to make chemical bonds between nitrogen and carbon atoms. Using this reaction I managed to make several new chemicals that hadn’t been made before. This work was published in a scientific paper in the hope that other chemists will be able to use my methods to make similar, new, drug-like chemicals in the future.

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