INDEX enantiospecific

The applicant should provide justification for using the racemate. Where the interconversion of the enantiomers in vivo is more rapid than the distribution and elimination rates, then use of the racemate is justified. In cases where there is no such interconversion or it is slow, then differential pharmacological effects and fate of the enantiomers may be apparent. Use of the racemate may also be justified if any toxicity is associated with the pharmacological action and the therapeutic index is the same for both isomers. For preclinical assessment, pharmacodynamic, pharmacokinetic (using enantiospecific analytical methods) and appropriate toxicological studies of the individual enantiomers and the racemate will be needed. Clinical studies on human pharmacodynamics and tolerance, human pharmacokinetics and pharma-cotherapeutics will be required for the racemate and for the enantiomers as appropriate. 

Abstract Enantioselective heterogeneous catalysis requires surfaces with structures that are chiral at the atomic level. It is possible to obtain naturally chiral surfaces from crystalline inorganic materials with chiral bulk structures. It is also possible to create naturally chiral surfaces from achiral materials by exposing surfaces that have atomic stractures with no mirror symmetry planes oriented perpendicular to the surface. Over the past decade there have been a number of experimental and theoretical demonstrations of the enantiospecific physical phenomena and surface chemistry that arise from the adsorption of chiral organic compounds on the naturally chiral, high Miller index places of metals. 

In this crystal lattice system, all surfaces with Miller indices, (hkl), satisfying the conditions h x k x 1 and h k l h are chiral [11]. Although such high Miller index surfaces have been studied for decades, it was not until recently that McFadden et al. specifically pointed out and demonstrated that their low synunetry structures render them chiral and, therefore, that they might have enantiospecific interactions with chiral adsorbates [12]. There has been a growing interest in the enantiospecific properties of naturally chiral metal surfaces and in the possibility of using such surfaces for enantioselective chemical processes. 

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