Chemical Stories

Does an anticancer drug have to attack the cancer cell itself? Pembrolizumab helped change the answer by targeting a molecular "brake" that tumors can use to suppress the immune response.

Humans were working with iron oxide chemistry long before chemistry had a name. Some evidence of deliberate ochre processing goes back about 100,000 years.

What did ordinary barium chloride have to do with Marie Curie's isolation of radium? The answer is a beautiful lesson in how tiny chemical differences become powerful when repeated.

A one-atom ring change can turn a peptide residue into a carefully positioned optical reporter.

A defined AEEA-AEEA spacer shows why the connection between molecular parts deserves its own design.

Penicillamine building blocks let researchers test how two methyl groups beside sulfur influence a peptide scaffold.