• Question: When you say 'make compounds better', what do you mean?

    Asked by Maddy to Dawn, Dan, Christie on 18 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by SpindlyCoyote99.
    • Photo: Christie Waddington

      Christie Waddington answered on 18 Jun 2016:

      A compound is made up of two or more different elements joined by chemical bonds. Drugs are compounds for example because they’re made of many different elements which when combined into one molecule can act on the body to help treat diseases. When we say “make compounds better”, we can mean more than one thing (I’m using drugs as an example here!):
      1. We make the drug better at treating the disease. This could mean changing the elements in the compound, or changing the shape of it so it works better at the target site.
      2. Changing how you take the drug e.g. some drugs work better if for e.g. they are chewed, or injected, or drank.
      3. Coming up with new drugs to replace the old ones. Perhaps the current drug isn’t working very well, and we need a better one. This could be changing the elements in the compound completely, or changing the target site of the drug.

      I think that’s all. For things that aren’t drugs, “make compounds better” means changing the elements etc to make the compound do better at its function e.g. metal alloys can be made lighter, or stronger.

    • Photo: Dawn Lau

      Dawn Lau answered on 22 Jun 2016:

      I don’t have much to add to Christie’s answer! While looking for compounds (potential drugs) to target brain diseases, we might find some that work well in brain cells in a dish but not in a real brain attached to a living human being. Your brain has a protective shield around it called the blood brain barrier (BBB), which is mainly to protect your brain from infections. We might then have to try tweaking the structure so that it can cross the BBB. That’s just one example of making compounds better.

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