“This is the grand challenge problem that I started my lab to try to solve,” said Mark Levin, an associate professor of chemistry and the senior author on both papers. “We haven’t totally solved it, but we’ve taken two really big bites out of the problem, and these findings lay a clear foundation for the future.”In chemistry, a single atom can make a huge difference in a molecule.
From left: UChicago chemists Mark Levin, Jisoo Woo, and Tyler Pearson discuss techniques to swap nitrogen atoms in molecules—a change often made by drug discovery chemists. Credit: Julia Driscoll But the existing methods to do this have limited success. “You might accidentally delete the wrong carbon in the molecule, and this causes the rest of the molecule to shift,” said Jisoo Woo, a graduate student and the first author on the other study. “This can have a huge impact on how well the final molecule works.”
Neither method is perfect yet, the scientists said. But they offer a way forward where none previously existed.