Chemical Stories

Did you know that ibuprofen was originally developed as a safer alternative to aspirin?

How do scientists make DNA? Not by growing it. By building it—one letter at a time.

For years, scientists in the Pacific Northwest faced a strange mystery.

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.

Why must blue indigo temporarily stop behaving like blue indigo before it can dye your jeans? Sodium dithionite makes possible one of textile chemistry's most elegant reduction-oxidation cycles.

How can the sudden disappearance of a blue color become a precise chemical measurement? Sodium thiosulfate turns one of chemistry's most dramatic color changes into a quantitative endpoint.