Question: How long does it take you to make/design molecules

Simon Williams answered on 21 May 2021:

Hi Lucy. Good question! To make a single molecule it can be as little as a few hours to do a chemical reaction and then purify the new molecule. To design a molecule it only takes a few minutes to write a structure down on paper.

The difficult bit is to design and make the right molecule and this can take years! To make a really complex molecule you often need up to 50 chemical reactions all done in the right order and it can take many years to get all this right.

Designing the right molecule for what you want to do involves a lot of trial and error, a lot of making molecules, meausring their properties and then learning from that to work out what to make next. To design a new drug for example can often take 10 years with over 10000 molecules tested before exactly the right one is found.

Its like working out a puzzle using all the knowledge you have ever learned. Its a long process that is so satisfying when you get it all right at the end!