It’s referred to as asymmetric organocatalysis, and it’s absolutely fascinating.
“I was having breakfast with my wife.”
An interesting component of drug construction that medical researchers grapple with has to do with molecules' mirror images.
Just like our hands are mirror images of each other, molecules have reflections, too.
Our bodies can tell the mirror images apart, which means the medications we ingest have to as well.
Such reactions are controlled, started and sped up by items called catalysts.
Before the pioneering invention of organocatalysis, everyone thought their options were only metal catalysts or large enzyme catalysts.
That’s why List and MacMillan’s tool changed the game.
“The obvious answers or the obvious solutions are sometimes just too obvious,” he continued.
It was just too obvious."
That’s why, he says, the invention is being recognized now.
