ACS: Totally synthesis
Just to prove that I can handle a non-quirky session, here is a quick summary of a much more typical ACS presentation. The thing is, all these stories are interesting. Well, okay, nearly all of them.
In a session on natural products, I saw a talk by Craig Crews of Yale, which I admired for its clarity. He took the audience through what must have been several years of work on a compound called epoxomicin...
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which was found back in 1992 in a strain of actinomycete, a hairy-looking bacteria [see ref]. The molecule was said to have anti-tumor properties, but Crews couldn't get a hold of any of it, so he had to make it from scratch (scratch being itsy bitsy things available off the shelf).
Chemists call this "total synthesis," which means that in my notes, I am always writing that a group "totally synthesized" something, which doesn't sound quite right. Anyway, total synthesis is totally cool, I think. It is as near as I can think of to making something from nothing.
Crews and his lab went on to show that epoxomicin was messing with a specific sub-units of the 20S proteasome. The proteasome is a little recycling center in your cells that receives proteins deemed junk and with three enzymes—snip, snip, snip—totally un-synthesizes them, more or less. Blocking this action tends to kill the cell. Crews has started a spin-off company, Proteolix, to see what can be made of a souped-up version of the molecule. At least one cancer drug on the market works by inhibiting the proteasome, Velcade.
The new news from Crews is that his lab has also totally synthesized fellutamide B, and that it is also a potent proteosome inhibitor as well as a stimulator of nerve growth. And, lo, epoxomicin also turns out to stimulate nerve growth. So it seems that perhaps the two effects are linked.
Just one of the thousands of interesting stories at the meeting. There are plenty more to pour through on the Skeptical Chymist.