Our recent post about the history of chiral drugs and the thalidomide disaster was called to mind this week, as Andover (MA) based biotech DeuteRx published some interesting new work. The paper, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), is entitled “Differentiation of antiinflammatory and antitumorigenic properties of stabilized enantiomers of thalidomide analogs“. The authors report stabilizing the well-known in vivo inversion of the chiral center in thalidomide and analogues using stable isotope deuterium labeling.

 For the first time, the pharmacological effects of thalidomide enantiomers can be deconvoluted and studied. The implications for analogue drugs are broad and potentially impact multiple therapeutic targets.We congratulate Dr. Sheila DeWitt, founder of DeuteRx, and her team on the publication of this important paper!