Hello! I know...I haven't posted in quite a while! Literally over a month! I was all excited about starting my blog back in February and was doing pretty well by doing one each month. I know...if you want a blog to be successful, you need to post on a regular basis. And my intentions were good! But then...it hit!! (March 30th, 2017: I will never forget that day.) The worst viral infection I have ever gotten (short of the mumps when I was 6!) which then triggered a case of the shingles! Shingles? Me? Ms. Fit and Healthy and at the gym five days a week? Really? I couldn't believe it! So my excuse for not blogging would be the mind was willing but the flesh was very weak! As I am writing this, I am still recovering. I'm doing much better but I still have residual nerve pain. The official name for this is called postherpetic neuralgia and I could actually have this annoying pain for months! Or longer! I don't wish this on anyone. The truth is anyone can get shingles since most of us have had the chicken pox.
So I have spent the last few weeks trying to rest and going to the doctor. When I wasn't doing that, I did ALOT of Internet surfing. I wanted to find anything I could about shingles. Being the scientist that I am, I wanted to do my research on the subject. I delved deep into shingles territory. Truth be known, there's so much out there. Most of it is rubbish! However, I did find some interesting articles and informative data about shingles that I did not know about. I have a Biology degree and shingles was a topic that I studied ever so fleetingly back in 1984 during my Microbiology class, but now I have more knowledge about shingles than I care to know.
So...How am I going to connect this experience of mine with radioiodination of compounds and chemistry consulting? I thought long and hard about this, and I figured there was some connection somewhere. And then I remembered something I did that demonstrated how I am a typical chemist and a consulting one at that. If you are reading this blog and/or in any science discipline, you will relate to this. Here's what I did: when the doctor prescribed Valtrex for me as an anti-viral regimen the first thing I did was look it up to see what the molecular structure was. The actual chemical name is valaciclovir and it has a molecular mass of 324.336 g/mol. However, it cannot be iodinated. It has no active ring and there's some steric hindrance. I was a little sad, because I was so looking forward to writing a post about which iodination method I would choose and theorize which HPLC purification I would consider. How "geeky scientist" is that? You know that you're entrenched in the radioiodination world when the first thing you do is look up structures and theorize reaction and purification methods! And like I stated, I was a little sad at that the fact that it couldn't be labeled with 125-I. The reality is that not all compounds that are used for research purposes can be iodinated. Sometimes other labeling methods must be utilized if a radioactive tracer is needed for a particular experiment or assay.
This response of mine also lead me to ponder about how I would consult with a potential client if they came to me with a conundrum of how to proceed with their work if radioiodination wasn't an option. This used to happen to me quite often when I worked at DuPont. A customer would inquire about having some radiolabelling done on their compound and when I would review the molecular structure, it would be determined that 125-I could not be used. There either was no site for the 125-I to label to or the molecular structure itself deterred any reaction from occurring (steric hindrance). In some instances, there was a perfect site for the 125-I to label to, but this region of the compound was also the active site. Placing a radioactive isotope right in that spot would cause issues with any experiments or biological assays.
Chemistry consulting sometimes means having discussions with clients that lead to other options that they did not consider. I may have some ideas for their work that they did not know were choices that may even be more beneficial for what they want to achieve. Presenting alternative options to clients also makes for good business relationships. I'm sure fellow scientists would appreciate discussions I can engage in with them which will provide options for their research. Fellow scientists helping each other out should always be the norm. We are not in competition with each other; we are all trying to achieve the same goal in improving society through science.
I believe I achieved what I set out to do in connecting my chemistry consulting with my experience with shingles. It was a little bit of a stretch but it gave me an opportunity to state some aspects of what I can provide in my chemistry consulting. It's also giving me an idea for my next post. I think I will write about how I come to a decision as to which iodination methods should be used for particular compounds.
Thanks for stopping by! Comments are appreciated. Until next time!
