The Bond Breaker

Recent study into physiology and biology has allowed science to determine what causes certain diseases, but unfortunately creating a compound that treats the disease is a whole other issue. Presently, chemists start with a base molecule and add or subtract atoms one by one. This is very inefficient with on about 8 percent of the starting material being converted into a usable drug.

Fortunately Melanie Sanford of Michigan University has developed a custom made catalyst which breaks down the C-H bond, allowing for any chemical she specifies to bind after that. Because the C-H bond is one of the most common bonds in organic chemistry, this catalyst grreatly speeds up drug synthesis and molecule building.

The catalyst, which is a modified basic bond breaker, has been changed by adding nanosized structure to make it react only with the desired C-H bond. The catalyst also contains the molecule intended to replace the C-H group, greatly increasing efficiency.

Using this new catalyst, chemical engineers could now use flourine in their compounds. Flourine is an attractive component of new drugs because it breaks down slowly in biological systems, but the reason it has not been used previously was that it is extremely difficult to add or remove the element from starting materials.

Gas companies are also estastic about this discovery because by changing one C-H bond in methane, it becomes liquid methanol, which has the same energy output as methane but is much easier to transport. All that's left to do is manufacture this catalyst on the million ton scale and it would "impact ... the world right away."

http://www.popsci.com/melinda-wenner/article/2008-10/bond-breaker