The Internet of scary things

Posted Feb 9, 2017 9:59 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: The Internet of scary things by anselm
Parent article: The Internet of scary things

Note also, rather importantly, that the thalidomide *as* *tested* for safety, was *NOT* the thalidomide as sold in the market. The test thalidomide was made in small batches and was pretty much pure L-Thalidomide - WHICH IS SAFE.

Unfortunately, when they scaled up to production the new process produced racemic (equal quantities of L and R) thalidomide, and it was R-Thalidomide that did the damage.

One of those things unfortunately, an "unknown unknown" which should have been caught but nobody thought of it.

Cheers,
Wol

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The Internet of scary things

Posted Feb 9, 2017 17:13 UTC (Thu) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link] (1 responses)

That turns out not to be the case, although it was bruited about as a rationalization for many years. There are two stereomeric states of thalidomide that can be separated in the laboratory, but they interconvert in vivo. So the biological effect of both forms come out the same. The underlying point remains the same - speeding up the approval process has risks as well as rewards.

The Internet of scary things

Posted Feb 11, 2017 19:59 UTC (Sat) by ssokolow (guest, #94568) [Link]

Here's a citation for that, in case anyone is interested:

Thalidomide. The role of water in the mechanism of its aqueous racemisation.
0000-0002-8635-8390
http://www.ch.imperial.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/?p=8246