BioWorld: Fluorination Propels SciFluor into 'Billion-Dollar' Markets
26-Oct-2012
Fluorination Propels SciFluor
Into ‘Billion-Dollar’ Markets
By Marie Powers
Staff Writer
Nearly one in four marketed drugs contains the
chemical element fluorine, including household names for
vastly different indications such as Lipitor (atorvastatin,
Pfizer Inc.), Cipro (ciprofloxacin, Bayer AG) and Prozac
(fluoxetine, Eli Lilly and Co.)
The reason? The carbon-fluorine bond, the strongest
in organic chemistry, is widely used to block sites of
metabolism and improve drug half-life. Using fluorine to modify the chemical structure of a drug has been
demonstrated to improve potency, selectivity, tissue
penetration, half-life and metabolic stability.
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