Category: Sciencebase

Despite appearances, anyone hoping to get some kind of a buzz from a soft drink marketed as “Speed in a Can,” “Liquid Cocaine” and “Cocaine – Instant Rush”, will get nothing more than a potentially harmful spiking of their blood sugar concentration and a dash of the stimulant caffeine. The soda in a red can with an almost familiar logo, actually contains no illicit drugs and is supposedly marketed only as an energy drink and food supplement. The product has been sold since August 2006 in at least a dozen US states, but has come under attack from the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and was this week pulled from supermarket shelves.

The FDA website shows the full warning letter sent to manufacturer Redux Beverages LLC of Las Vegas, which outlines how the marketing for this product is in breach of several US laws. According to the original Redux website, the drink “Cocaine is marketed as an alternative to an illicit street drug, and certain ingredients contained therein are intended to prevent, treat, or cure disease conditions.” All such claims are illegal under US law. One claim in particular seems to suggest that there is more to “Cocaine” than meets the eye: “This beverage should be consumed by responsible adults. Failure to adhere to this warning may result in excess excitement, stamina, . . . and possible feeling of euphoria,” it says. But, which company would be so stupid as to suggest that its soft drink contains actual cocaine? Of course, it is no urban legend that the original formulation of an older soft drink today bought in red cans with an all too familiar logo did indeed contain said illicit pharmaceutical, but is no longer used.

Clegg Ivey, a partner in Redux is on record as saying, “We like to think we have a great sense of humor…And our market, primarily folks from ages 20 to 30, they love the ideas, they love the name, they love the whole campaign. These are not drug users.”

They really love it, do they? What could be lamer than a bunch of deluded twenty and thirty somethings who do not use cocaine, imbibing a soft drink marketed as “liquid cocaine”? I can almost see a big “L” for loser hovering in front of their foreheads as they chug the stuff.

InChI=1/C17H21NO4/c1-18-12-8-9-13(18)15(17(20)21-2)14(10-12)22-16(19)11-6-4-3-5-7-11/h3-7,12-15H,8-10H2,1-2H3/t12?,13?,14-,15+/m0/s1

Forget Spiderman, Geckoman is where it’s at, at least so suggests research due to be published in the Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter. According to Nicola Pugno at the Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy, the secret of making a sticky, but non-stick, material could lie in creating a “hierarchical structure” of branching bristles from ever finer carbon nanotubes. Such a bristly material would mimic the physical properties of gecko feet that allow them to hang effortlessly by a single pad from even the smoothest of surfaces.

Pugno’s calculations suggest that the hierarchical approach could lead to a stiff, non-tangling material with tips flexible enough for temporary adhesion. Previously, the research team has suggested that carbon nanotubes might allow us to build a space elevator, which was blogged about at length in the summer of 2006.

According to a report in New Scientist, Stefano Mezzasalma of the University of Trieste in Italy says the approach definitely could work, “The first prototype of a Spiderman suit might be ready in a decade or so.” But, like I say, move over Spiderman, it’s Geckoman we want to see!

With Vioxx, Arcoxia, and potentially all COX2 inhibitors nixed, to what can sufferers of osteoarthritis turn? Many have sought relief in the supposedly natural ingredients of healthy joints – chondroitin and its agent glucosamine. However, there was scant evidence that taking these two compounds together had any benefits whatsoever beyond the anecdotal claims of some users convinced they worked.

Now, a team in Switzerland, where chondroitin is regularly prescribed as a health supplement, have demonstrated that the compound is no more effective in easing hip and knee pain in osteoarthritis than a placebo. Moreover, Peter Juni of the University of Berne suggests that its use should be discouraged.

Chondroitin sulfate is commonly taken as a health supplement because of a supposed association with the benefits in terms of joint “lubrication”. It is usually taken in combination with glucosamine because this compound allegedly acts as a carrier. However, there is no evidence that any individual is ever deficient in glucosamine and the benefits of supplementary chondriotin have not been proved. At best, results have been mixed.

The researchers at the University of Berne in Switzerland, conducted a meta review of data from 20 trials that included more than 3,600 patients with osteoarthritis and found that chondroitin apparently had no effect in relieving osteoarthritis. Details are published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Juni says there is no evidence which suggests that chondroitin helps decrease pain more than a placebo.

InChI=1/C13H21NO15S/c1-2(15)14-3-8(7(19)13(28-11(3)22)29-30(23,24)25)26-12-6(18)4(16)5(17)9(27-12)10(20)21/h3-9,11-13,16-19,22H,1H3,(H,14,15)(H,20,21)(H,23,24,25)/t3-,4+,5+,6-,7-,8-,9+,11-,12-,13-/m1/ s1/f/h14,20,23H

The discovery of the life-threatening effects of Vioxx led to its rapid withdrawal by manufacturer Merck under pressure from drug agencies. Now, the successor to the notorious osteoarthritis drug, Arcoxia, is to be banned by the Food and Drug Administration.

Vioxx, a potent, yet purportedly selective, inhibitor of the inflammatory enzyme cyclooxygenase-2 (Cox-2) caused serious cardiovascular complications (heart attack, to put it bluntly) in too many patients once it was released to the wider prescribing world. Pharmaceutical giant Merck hoped that its Arcoxia follow-up in 2004 would fill the niche without being nixed. However doubts about the safety and potential side effects of all Cox-2 inhibitors in the eyes of the FDA has thrown the whole market into disarray.

The FDA’s report on the new drug suggested that its widespread use in treating arthritis could lead to 30,000 heart attacks each year. Merck’s counterargument suggested that the drug has a similar benefit-risk analysis profile as other drugs, such as diclofenac. FDA’s David Graham warned that Arcoxia could be “a potential public-health disaster” because of the increased risk of heart attack and stroke posed by long-term use of the drug. He suggested Arcoxia should be compared with its risk profile with naproxen, against which Vioxx had been compared originally and found wanting.

InChI=1/C17H14O4S/c1-22(19,20)14-9-7-12(8-10-14)15-11-21-17(18)16(15)13-5-3-2-4-6-13/h2-10H,11H2,1H3

A constant flux of the stress hormone, released by the adrenal glands, could underpin certain forms of prostate and breast cancer. According the George Kulik and his colleages at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, epinephrine can change these cells make them resistant to programmed cell death (apoptosis) and so susceptible to the runaway cell division characteristic of cancer. Moreover, triggering cell death is the basis of cancer therapy.

Levels of epinephrine are chronically raised in the stressed and depressed, so Kulik’s research would suggest that overcoming these two problems might lead to a reduced risk of cancer. Writing in JBC, Kulik says that “Stress may both contribute to the development of cancer and may also reduce the effectiveness of cancer treatments.”

InChI=1/C9H13NO3/c1-10-5-9(13)6-2-3-7(11)8(12)4-6/h2-4,9-13H,5H2,1H3

Spider silk is “pound for pound” stronger than steel and has a greater elasticity than rubber. Such properties would make it a rather useful material for a large variety of medical and engineering applications if only it could be made in large enough quantities and with a useful thickness and consistency.

Thomas Scheibel at the Technical University of Munich has now taken a step towards understanding the spider’s secret with a view to creating an artificial spinneret for producing unlimited quantities of spider silk. Writing in in Angewandte, the team explain how they have discovered that the interaction between the hydrophilic and lipophilic properties of the silk proteins plays an important role in the spinning process.

Fundamentally, the spinning of spider silk represents a phase change from a solution into a solid thread. The silk used by orb weaver spiders to spin the edges and spokes of their webs and to make a quick escape when attacked is composed of two different proteins. The Munich team has now successfully used genetic engineering to produce one of the spider silk proteins of the European garden spider (Araneus daidematus).

While purifying the protein by dialysis, the researchers observed the separation of two different fluid phases. Whereas one phase consisted of protein dimers, the second consisted of oligomers. After adding potassium phosphate, a natural initiator of silk aggregation, the liquid could be pulled into threads. “It is clearly not a structural change in the protein, but rather the degree of oligomerization that is crucial for thread formation,” concludes Scheibel.

The flavanone structure is a tough act to swallow, synthetically speaking. Its the common skeleton for flavonoids and other compounds in plant-derived food and drink, such as red wine, dark chocolate, green tea, soy, milk thistle, kosam root, and citrus fruits, and are thought to have positive effects on health via anti-tumor and anti-inflammatory behavior. There are literally hundreds scattered throughout nature, but until now chemists had no straightforward method of synthesizing them with enantiomeric purity.

Karl Scheidt of Northwestern University and his colleagues have developed a general route to ten different chiral flavanones and chromanones that relies on simple bifunctional thiourea catalysts. The team reports how decarboxylation of the beta-ketoester proceeds smoothly in a one-pot reaction with 80-94% enantiomeric excess for aryl and alkyl substrates.

The method sets the stage for a new range of potential anticancer drugs ripe for testing. Further details can be found in JACS.

InChI=1/C15H12O2/c16-13-10-15(11-6-2-1-3-7-11)17-14-9-5-4-8-12(13)14/h1-9,15H,10H2

The absolute configuration of a subtly chiral molecule has been determined using Raman optical activity and quantum mechanics. Werner Hug and his colleagues at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, obtained the configuration of (R)-[2H1, 2H2, 2H3]-neopentane a molecule in which the central carbon is surrounded by four methyl groups bearing differing numbers of hydrogen isotopes.

For those who don’t know, a molecule is chiral (or handed) by definition if the left and right hand forms cannot be superimposed on to each other (a pair of hands, or gloves, for that matter are archetypally chiral (which comes from the Greek for hand).

The left and right-handed forms, or enantiomers, of (R)-[2H1, 2H2, 2H3]-neopentane are so similar that chemists had consigned this oddity to the lab shelf having given up any hope of distinguishing between its enantiomers. But not Hug. He and his colleagues were determined to push the limits of Raman spectroscopy to take this molecule back off the shelf and provide us with new insights into the nature of chirality.

Chirality itself lies at the heart of life on earth, but understanding the origin of the homochirality seen in nature remains a serious challenge, the new insights from Hug et al provides an important clue as to how isotopes may have played a role.

Hug et al publish details of their work in Nature.

InChI=1/C5H12/c1-5(2,3)4/h1-4H3/i1D,2D,3D

Bishnu Khanal and Eugene Zubarev of Rice University in Houston, Texas have found that nanoscopic gold roads coated with polymer can spontaneously self-assemble into rings within seconds of water droplets condensing on to the surface of a solution of the rods in dichloromethane solvent.

Nanoscale objects organized into superstructures are interesting because the properties of such tiny particles depend not only on their composition, shape, and size, but also to a large extent on their spatial distribution and the degree of their ordering within a superstructure.

Images obtained with an electron microscope show that the nanorods in the rings are oriented randomly when their concentration in the original solution is high. However, at lower concentrations the result is truly amazing: The nanorods are oriented in a head-to-tail sequence along the edge of the ring.

The team reports details of their results in Angewandte

Got an iPod? Sick of having to charge it up at the electric outlet? Then try maple syrup or cola!

Researchers at Saint Louis University in Missouri have developed a fuel cell that uses sugar from almost any source from soft drinks (although not lite or diet versions though, so Coke Zero is out) to tree sap or even honey. They reckon their fuel cell could run three times longer than a conventional rechargeable lithium battery on a single charge. Better still, the fuel cell is itself biodegradable so at end of life it does not become a toxic burden on the environment like lithium or nickel-cadmium batteries.

“This study shows that renewable fuels can be directly employed in batteries at room temperature to lead to more energy-efficient battery technology than metal-based approaches,” explains team leader Shelley Minteer, an electrochemist at SLU. “It demonstrates that by bridging biology and chemistry, we can build a better battery that’s also cleaner for the environment.” Minteer reports her findings this week at the 233rd national meeting of the ACS in Chicago.

For more on how fuel cells might be improved, check out this recent item in Reactive Reports

InChI=1/C12H22O11/c13-1-4-6(16)8(18)9(19)11(21-4)23-12(3-15)10(20)7(17)5(2-14)22-12/h4-11,13-20H,1-3H2