Isotretinoin
Isotretinoin is a teratogen; there is about a 20–35% risk for congenital defects in infants exposed to the drug "in utero", and about 30–60% of children exposed to isotretinoin prenatally have been reported to show neurocognitive impairment. Because of this, there are strict controls on prescribing isotretinoin to women who may become pregnant and women who become pregnant while taking isotretinoin are strongly advised to terminate their pregnancies.
Rebecca Abergel
Abergel’s BioActinide Research group conducts a variety of different experiments in the field of coordination chemistry, analytical chemistry, photophysics, biological chemistry, health physics, pharmacology, molecular biology, and cell biology. More specifically, her recent interests have focused on the coordination behavior of lanthanides and actinides. Her group is especially active in developing therapeutics to treat people who have been exposed to radionuclides or atoms that contain excess nuclear charge. These radionuclides can include plutonium, americium, curium, uranium, plutonium, and neptunium. Recent work by the BioActinide Research group has involved synthesis of different actinide chelating agents that could be used to selectively bind radionuclides in the human body in order to safely remove them.
Currently, the only drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat radionuclide contamination is diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (DTPA) (Figure 1). DTPA has shown some promise is treating plutonium poisoning, but this treatment is specific only to plutonium. Furthermore, DTPA must be administered intravenously, which is an issue due to the extremely time-sensitive nature of radiation poisoning. In the quest of finding a more versatile and easily administered treatment for radiation poisoning, Abergel sees potential in developing new classes of therapeutics.