Medicines could be made to have fewer side effects and work in smaller doses with the help of a new technique that makes drug molecules more resistant to breakdown by the human liver. Researchers based at Princeton University reported in the journal Science that they created a synthetic enzyme that acts as a catalyst to replace certain hydrogen atoms of a drug molecule with fluorine atoms. This swap stabilizes the molecule and makes it resistant to the liver enzymes that can inactivate a drug or create toxic byproducts.
