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Image adapted from Jurii

The winners of this years Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki, for their work in palladium catalysed reactions.

Ah, a subject close to my own heart! As a student of Molecular and Drug Design, we studied this shizz in lectures. Hell, I think I even did a Suzuki reaction! That pretty well makes me famous IMHO.

SO – palladium catalysed reactions. What are they, I hear you say? Oh, dear gentle reader, how long do you have for me to BLOW YOUR MIND WITH CHEMISTRY AWESOME? Three minutes? K.

Carbon to carbon bonds are super important in the human body, which is pretty much made of carbon. Nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen get a look in, but carbon is where it’s at.

There’s a big trend at the moment, has been for years, in designing small molecules as drugs. Some small molecules mimic the molecules naturally inside the body. Basically it’s telling the body what you to do in a language it can understand.

To make a carbon-based small molecule, you need to make some carbon to carbon bonds. The sad part is that carbon is a chiller, and isn’t keen on making friends with other carbons. Put a carbon and another carbon in a test-tube and they just won’t get it on. They don’t care to so much as hold hands.

HOWEVER, chuck some palladium catalyst into the mix and ba-zing! You’ve got yourself a sweet, sweet reaction that’s controllable and would otherwise have taken a zillion years to happen. Now we can create new molecules and drugs to benefit peeps everywhere!

Words cannot describe how nerdy and happy I am right now to write about palladium catalysed reactions. Maybe I’ve missed my calling as a chemist after all.