Yesterday I glanced through the list of drugs approved by the FDA in Q2 2023. One in particular, Miebo,1 -developed by Bausch and Lomb- made me sit up and stare. The compound is a partially fluorinated alkane (1-(Perfluorohexyl)octane, Figure 1) and is administered directly into the eye as a neat, anhydrous liquid to treat dry

Whilst I was working towards my PhD in the early 90’s I remember reading ‘The Hot Zone’ by Richard Preston.1 Although non-fiction it read very much like a Michael Critchton2 thriller- describing the emergence and spread of viral hemorrhagic fevers and filoviruses such as Ebola and Marburg. Viruses such as Ebola are somewhat self-limiting in that the

I always look forward to publication of the annual review synthetic approaches to the new drugs approved for the preceding year. In some ways its bitter sweet since it acts as a reminder of how difficult drug discovery and development is and how the large volume of molecules that start their journey never actually make