PCL102H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Combined Oral Contraceptive Pill, Arsenic, Syphilis
6 Mar 2018
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The pill went to the market in the 1960s. Only very few chemicals cousins of progesterone were active, including progesterone. It was very hard to make a progesterone analog that had biological activity. They tested the man made drug in fertile rabbits, and they found that the man made compound was stronger than progesterone, it had more biological activity. They changed small portions of the molecule to make it so it can be taken orally. It was the analogues that are used in birth control pills. One thing that was special about the pills that went to market is that they can be taken orally. Its used to kill the microbes causing syphilis and sleeping sickness. Theres not enough of these organisms to provide us with these drugs, so we have to synthesize them in labs. We start (cid:271)y (cid:373)aki(cid:374)g thousa(cid:374)ds a(cid:374)d thousa(cid:374)ds of drugs at first, (cid:271)e(cid:272)ause we do(cid:374)"t k(cid:374)ow whi(cid:272)h drug will bind to the protein.
