Total Synthesis of Novel Antivirotics
Adam Kovalčík · Dulovce, Slovakia
George D. Yancopoulos Innovator Award ($100,000) · Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair · 2025
A shorter synthetic route to the investigational antiviral galidesivir, starting from cheap corn-husk waste rather than the usual feedstocks, together with a novel antiviral compound produced along the way.
Cut the synthesis from 15 steps to 10, roughly doubled yield in less time, and brought the reported cost down from about $75 per gram to about $12.50 per gram.
Cost per gram is a metric anyone can check and everyone understands. Reframing a synthesis problem as an access problem — the drug exists, nobody can afford to make it — is what makes a step-count reduction matter outside the laboratory.
- Multi-step total synthesis
- Synthetic route redesign and step reduction
- Corn-husk waste feedstock processing
- Yield and cost-per-gram analysis
- Find the number that decides whether the work gets used, and optimise that
- Step count, yield, time and cost are four separate claims; reporting all four leaves nowhere to hide
- A waste-stream starting material is a cost argument, not just a sustainability one
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