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First deuterated drug approved

Nature Biotechnology volume 35, pages 493–494 (2017)Cite this article

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A Correction to this article was published on 09 November 2017

This article has been updated

For decades, chemists have been using deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen, to tweak medicinal compounds and improve their pharmacokinetic and toxicity profiles. Now, Austedo's approval “establishes a clearer pathway for how other deuterated compounds can reach the market,” says Graham Timmins, an associate professor at the College of Pharmacy at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in March 2017. But whether deuterated drugs deliver clinical advantages to patients remains unclear. Skeptics argue that these modifications, instead, provide drugmakers with a brand new therapeutic compound and the opportunity to extend an old drug's patent life.

Deuterated drugs swap hydrogen atoms for deuterium at selected locations in the molecular structure. With that chemical change, modified drugs can resist metabolic degradation and remain active for longer in the body than the parent compound. Austedo is modified tetrabenazine—a drug that targets the vesicular monoamine transporter type 2, a transport protein on presynaptic neurons. Tetrabenazines have been a mainstay in Huntington's treatment for decades. They act by depleting the monoamines dopamine and serotonin, and other monoamine neurotransmitters, helping to reduce the involuntary writhing associated with the disorder.

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Change history

  • 13 April 2018

    In the version of this article initially published, the drug BMS-986165 was listed as a "deuterium-modified" version of rosuvastatin, rather than a "deuterium-modified" new molecular entity. The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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  1. Portland, Oregon

    Charles Schmidt

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Schmidt, C. First deuterated drug approved. Nat Biotechnol 35, 493–494 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0617-493

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