There are a pair of doctors from the UK who have written a song about an exciting new drug from SmaxoGlithKline: Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin, (their website used to suck a lot less, strange) which can cure everything from the common cold to being struck by lighting, but has the unfortunate side effects of heart attacks, becoming gay and growing extra breasts. As a redeeming feature, you can take it orally, IV or up the arse. Class! Since I have no background in pharmacology and don’t know what any of those name-parts mean… is such a compound at least theoretically possible and what would its molecular structure look like? And in case it IS possible… how would one (theoretically, of course) go about synthesising it? Thank you 
I’m not totally qualified to answer this question as just and O-Chem and Biochem graduate, but I’d say that you can’t deduce the formula from this name alone. This isn’t the chemical name, it’s just a “scientific” or generic name.
Example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoxicillin
Amoxicillin vs. (2S,5R,6R)-6-[(R)-2-amino-2-(4-hydroxyphenyl)
acetamido]-3,3-dimethyl-7-oxo-4-thia-1-azabicyclo
[3.2.0] heptane-2-carboxylic acid
So you can’t tell anything about the structure fro the name (although this name incorporates a few o-chem structures: “paraeta”, etc. which describes an acetyl group on the far side of a benzene ring from something else) and a lot of these parts I’ve never even heard of before so they could be completely out of whole cloth, and you certainly can’t synthesize it.
Even if you knew the structure, there’s no guarantee that you can actually make it. Organic chemists are smart, but look at Tamiflu. We need Chinese star anise and it’s product shikimic acid to make the drug, really, even though we have quite a pressing need to produce the drug without waiting to grow buckets more star anise and we already have an obviously working biological process to copy from.
Once you had it, it would probably be biologically inert because it sounds big, or just carcinogenic at most because of it’s (aparent) aromatic ring structure.
You might want to e-mail Wesley Clark on this one because then you’ll be getting more than some random undergrad jackass’s opinion on the matter.
I can’t answer your question, FRM, but thanks for the link! Lurvly British accents. sigh
Except for “neo”, I have heard all these parts in drug names before. Paracetamol, amoxycillin, frusemide, streptomycin, can’t think of anything for benzene but it’s in a lot of drugs. I thought drug names were like polymer names where seemingly arbitrarily-chosen word-parts still corresponded to specific structures within a molecule but like I said I don’t know a thing about it so I could well be wrong.
I anticipate it will probably be nearly impossible to produce and inert/carcinogenic once it is. Even in the song, it sounds like it “cures” patients by killing them :eek:
No, the drug names are chosen on some other criteria; note that there is no “amoxy” or “strepto” group. This is because drugs are much more complex than polymers. Only the paracetamol example gives any insight into the actual structure of the drug where you have a hydroxy group oposite an “acetamol” on an aromatic ring.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetemol
Polymers like PVC on the other hand are relatively simple and the name actually reflects the structure:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvinyl_chloride
Off-topic slightly, but this is such a long one-word thread title that it only shows up as ‘…’ on the SDMB home page.
Ho damn. I was hoping I could draw the structure and put it on a t-shirt.
Look at this as an opportunity rather than a restriction. Maybe you could design a structure that looks like something dirty and then label it as Paracetoblahwhatever.
This thread reminded me of the following satirical web site depicting a ficticious drug. Enjoy.
Guys, while you’re listening to that song, you’ve got to listen to the “London Underground” song. Class.
Err… I don’t mean overlay them one on top of the other. I mean, if you’re going to listen to those guys sing about pharmaceuticals, you have also got to listen to their song about the London Underground afterwards. Or before. But not at the same time.