Chemical Stories

Does an anticancer drug have to attack the cancer cell itself? Pembrolizumab helped change the answer by targeting a molecular "brake" that tumors can use to suppress the immune response.

Humans were working with iron oxide chemistry long before chemistry had a name. Some evidence of deliberate ochre processing goes back about 100,000 years.

What did ordinary barium chloride have to do with Marie Curie's isolation of radium? The answer is a beautiful lesson in how tiny chemical differences become powerful when repeated.

An amide bond is common. Making the right one between two crowded fragments can be anything but common.

An Sn-Sn bond that can relay carbon-bond construction - with an important toxicity trade-off.

Sometimes an intermediate's most valuable property is simply having every substituent in exactly the right place.