The most expensive cancer treatments are now very affordable

California: The most expensive cancer treatments that used to cost sky-high prices will soon become much cheaper thanks to research by chemists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

According to media reports, a team of scientists led by organic chemistry expert Prof. Ohioan Cowan has developed an innovative and budget-friendly method of producing key drug molecules that is potentially revolutionizing the pharmaceutical industry.

Currently, some cancer drugs are very expensive to make. For example, a chemical used in cancer drugs costs up to $3,200 per gram, which is 50 times the price of gold.

A UCLA research team has discovered an inexpensive way to produce these essential drug molecules. They turned a chemical costing just $3 per gram into a valuable drug molecule, drastically reducing production costs.

Their approach doesn’t just apply to cancer drugs. It can also be used to make various chemicals for medicine for various diseases. The process they produce is called “aminodealkenylation”.

The researchers used only oxygen and copper to transform common organic molecules into something more valuable. They break the carbon-carbon bonds in these molecules and replace them with carbon-nitrogen bonds, producing compounds called amines.

Amines are important in the world of pharmaceuticals and agriculture. They form strong interactions with molecules in living organisms and are included as key ingredients in many drugs and agrochemicals.

In general, amines are expensive and complicated to produce. The traditional method uses rare and expensive metals like platinum and gold. But the UCLA technique produced the amines using readily available oxygen and copper.