[Bakterien]

A have a master in Organic chemistry and work in a semi academic place. I would concider myself as intermediate when it comes to organic chemistry and I am the co athour to one peer reviwed article. I dont really know what the minimun recirements are to publish your results in a paper. Guess it depends on the article.

I have recently synthesized a common drug used every day in hospitals around the world. It took10 steps, but I think I can apply a new reaction and cut it down to 6 steps. Is this something I can publish ? The reaction is well know but with a little twist, nothing to complicated. The beauty is if I can used it on said molecule.

Any thoughts

[wildfyr]

You can publish almost anything in a crappy enough journal, the trick is finding a reputable journal that will accept your research.

I think such research would be reasonable to publish in a respectable low-mid tier journal. You can always submit it to somewhere bigger like the Journal of Organic chemistry, the worst that happens is that it gets rejected in a week or so.

[Bakterien]

Thanks ! Something like Tetrahedron maybe ?

[kriggy]

It realy depends how did you improve the synthesis, its not really only the number of steps. Is the overall yield better? What about total price of the reaction sequence? But I suppose if you used already known "reaction with little twist" you most likely have positive answers to those questions.
Depending on the type of drug but you can definitely try JOC or letteers. Or maybe even patent it and sell the procedure to pharma company

[Bakterien]

Thanks for your kind words. I still have alot to do before I can draw any conclusions. But you made me motivated.

I'm really proud that I came up with this by myself. I like research, maybe I should look for a PhD position...

[crawlingmcedge]

Only requirements are that the journal accepts it.

It depends on what you've actually done though. If you've cut a 30 step procedure to 15 then its JACS worthy at the very least.

If however you've cut a 12 step synthesis to 11 by using a more complicated precursor on Sigma, then I would struggle to see any decent journal publishing it.

You really should ask a PI/postdoc who has experience.

[wildfyr]

crawlingmcedge, OP said

I have recently synthesized a common drug used every day in hospitals around the world. It took 10 steps, but I think I can apply a new reaction and cut it down to 6 steps.

So, by this standard he may have quite a high impact journal he should target.

OP, I should caution you that you shouldn't get delusions of grandeur until you have actually applied this new reaction and cut out the steps. Organic synthesis is not known for being highly predicable.

And while publishing is great, this could be worth a lot of money to a pharmaceutical company, so you may want to investigate selling your idea to the highest bidder. Be very careful with your IP, they are sharks.

[phth]

crawlingmcedge, OP said

I have recently synthesized a common drug used every day in hospitals around the world. It took 10 steps, but I think I can apply a new reaction and cut it down to 6 steps.

So, by this standard he may have quite a high impact journal he should target.

OP, I should caution you that you shouldn't get delusions of grandeur until you have actually applied this new reaction and cut out the steps. Organic synthesis is not known for being highly predicable.

And while publishing is great, this could be worth a lot of money to a pharmaceutical company, so you may want to investigate selling your idea to the highest bidder. Be very careful with your IP, they are sharks.

+1 aim high

[wildfyr]

By IP I mean intellectual property, not internet protocol address 

[Doc Oc]

crawlingmcedge, OP said

I have recently synthesized a common drug used every day in hospitals around the world. It took 10 steps, but I think I can apply a new reaction and cut it down to 6 steps.

So, by this standard he may have quite a high impact journal he should target.

OP, I should caution you that you shouldn't get delusions of grandeur until you have actually applied this new reaction and cut out the steps. Organic synthesis is not known for being highly predicable.

And while publishing is great, this could be worth a lot of money to a pharmaceutical company, so you may want to investigate selling your idea to the highest bidder. Be very careful with your IP, they are sharks.

It depends very much on what the steps being skipped are. If they're challenging/low yielding/difficult to purify, then maybe. If he's skipping protection/deprotection, then maybe not since those tend to be very robust and high yielding.

The IP position also depends very much on the transformations being done. If the medication is already in widespread use in hospitals then odds are the company position is very strong. It's worth looking into, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear the synthesis falls under prior art or "known to those skilled in the art."