The news story today is about Concert Pharmaceuticals partnering with Celgene to develop Concert’s deuterated compounds. Concert and Auspex are two pharmaceutical companies pursuing the deuterated compound as a unique drugs but the science is a bit of a mystery.
Hydrogen and its isotope Deuterium exists in nature and thus any compound will exist in its native version with some deuterated hydrogen. These drug companies hope that using the deuterated version of the chemical compound will change its binding property and its metabolism for the better. These companies have convinced some Pharma companies that their drugs are worth investing and will be better from biological point of view but also from a patent point of view.
This issue has been going on since a long time as the Nature link below in 2009 points out. Wonder what the reality is…