PROVO — A group of Brigham Young University chemists has developed a cheaper, more efficient way of producing a synthetic molecule that is widely used in modern prescription drugs.

The team was led by BYU chemistry professor Merritt Andrus, who worked with graduate student Erik Hicken and undergraduate students Jeff Stevens and Karl Bedke.

Their discovery could have broad implications in the discovery, production, and possibly the cost of many forthcoming drugs.

Many next-generation prescription drugs, currently in the trial phase of development, rely on chiral molecules, which allow a drug to specifically target infected protein chains in the body and directly treat them.

"In order to intervene and treat a virus, you need to identify a specific protein that is not functioning properly and bind selectively to it," Andrus said. "Chiral molecules are being used more and more, because those protein targets (in the body) are also chiral."

Chiral molecules are asymmetrical and can occur in a "left-handed" or "right-handed" form, depending on which side of the molecule is open for binding to another molecule.

For medicinal purposes, only the left-handed type is useful. Under previous methods of producing chiral molecules, however, both types were produced in equal amounts and half of every batch of chiral molecules went to waste.

But the new process discovered by the BYU team uses an inexpensive protein found in plants, quinine, as a catalyst to force the chiral molecules to all form with the same orientation. Quinine itself is a protein molecule that is always "one-handed."

"Our method improves the efficiency of making this product," Andrus said. "Pharmaceutical companies can more easily make chiral molecules in this class now . . . to discover new drugs, screen new drugs, and also in production."

Andrus said he doesn't know what impact the new process would have on prescription drug prices but said it could potentially drive costs down.

"We didn't do a cost analysis, but this way is more efficient," he said. "There's fewer steps, and you don't waste half the product."

The results of the BYU experiment, which was conducted on a specific type of type 2 diabetes drug that will soon be on the market, appear in the latest issue of the Journal of Organic Chemistry.

The team is already working to expand the applications to other types of diabetes drugs.

"We're working on an improved method; applying this process to other drugs with similar specific needs," said Erik Hicken, a graduate student who worked closely with Andrus on the project. "There are three or four other diabetes drugs in trials with similar needs."