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Published online 11 May 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.462
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How thalidomide makes its mark
Drug's effects on embryonic blood-vessel growth may be the source of malformed limbs.
More than 50 years after the drug thalidomide hit the market as a remedy for nausea in pregnant women, researchers may finally have pinned down how it causes severe birth defects.
Their results show that the drug's ability to block the development of new blood vessels may be behind the deformed limbs of children born to women who took thalidomide early in pregnancy.
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Interesting article, thanks. I remember hearing somewhere that only one enantiomer of thalidomide is dangerous, and keep wondering if that is true. If so, wouldn't that be a good way forward? Unless that safe enantiomer is also pharmacologically inactive too, I suppose.
Dissecting the differential biological activity of the thalidomide enantiomers is complicated by their rapid racemization (t1/2 566 min at pH 7.4, 37 oC; Nishimura et al. (1994) Chem Pharm Bull 42:1157) http://www.journalarchive.jst.go.jp/jnlpdf.php?cdjournal=cpb1958&cdvol=42&noissue=5&startpage=1157&lang=en&from=jnltoc http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Term=8069968 Methylation at the chiral centre, to prevent racemization, does allow the distinct activities of the enantiomers to be observed (see above ref.). CPS49, the molecule used in the PNAS paper discussed here, has no chiral centre.