Turning coal to medicines: Chinese scientists bring a 160-year-old dream to life

Chinese scientists have discovered a way to turn cheap coal into valuable ingredients for medicine. This was once a long and difficult process, but now they have found a surprising short cut. In a study published on March 16 in the journal Nature, Jiao Ning’s team at Peking University solved a chemical puzzle that had confounded scientists for over 160 years. They successfully transformed inexpensive and readily available industrial feedstock – olefins – into high-value alkynes under mild and...

By Zhang Tong