where do the chemicals in prescription medications come from?

Question

My son takes Focalin XR for his ADHD. It works great, but today at the pharmacy I started thinking where do the chemical compounds in this come from? Like I’m sure my pharmacy buys from a compound pharmacy. But where does the compound pharmacy by the methyl and phenyl from?

And how are these extracted from their sources? Is it mined? Does it come from corn? Animals?

In: 0

Answer 1

The pharmaceutical company will make the drug and sell it to the pharmacy. Commonly this will involve different chemicals in large scale chemical reactions to make the drug itself plus other stuff to make it into a pill. Nature provides all the chemical building blocks needed – people over time learned to play with these to make new chemicals and so on.