DIARY OF A BIOCHEM MAJOR

Time for another molecule of the day! Sorry for slacking off, I know I should be spending most of my time on tumblr, but sometimes real life beckons.

What I have for you today is a fantastic molecule. This chemical is one the best selling medicines in the world today. Its maker, Pfizer, has made over $12 billion since it came to market. Now bear in mind before you think Pfizer is some evil company over charging for medicine that out of 10,000 possible drug candidates, only 1 ever gets to market and R&D is not inexpensive (try a few hundred million plus). Drug companies need to get that R&D money back plus even more so they can continue research.

Anyway, this drug (known as Lipitor) helps to reduce the bad cholesterol in our body’s through a cool little mechanism. Lipotor, like most other statins (drugs that lower cholesterol), works by acting as a competitive inhibitor to HMG-CoA reductase.

A competitive inhibitor works by basically blocking the enzyme’s active site. Lipitor comes in and attaches itself to the active site of HMG-CoA reductase which causes the liver to open up LDL cholesterol (the bad kind of cholesterol) receptors which allows the LDL in the bloodstream to be filtered out. What makes Lipitor so cool is the fact that it was not derived at all from a natural compound, it was completely made in a lab! So to all my fellow chemists and biochemists our there, keep working! You never know what you might find next.