Forget Organic Chemistry

From NewSciTech:

As carbon-based life forms, humans and other animals, invariably, are treated for disease with the help of carbon-based medicines.

But now, in a promising new study, scientists have shown that silicon — the stuff of computer chips, glass and pottery — may have extraordinary therapeutic value for treating human disease.

“All medicines are carbon-based — like we are,” says Robert West, a University of Wisconsin-Madison chemist and one of the world’s leading authorities on silicon chemistry. “There are about 50,000 biologically active molecules, and they’re all mainly carbon-based.”

But now, West and his colleagues report in the January edition of the journal Silicon Chemistry that the effectiveness and safety of an important anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer drug were enhanced remarkably by replacing one of the molecule’s carbon atoms with a silicon atom.

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