You are a pharmaceutical chemist. You are working for a small drug company. One day.
while working on cancer treatment research, you make an astounding discovery. You find
that a relatively simple compound, calcium nitrate, seems to be preventing
cancer in lab
rats. After many more months of research, you design a drug that is synthesized
using
calcium nitrate. It appears to prevent cancer in human patients as well.
The medical
community praises your drug as a "miracle".
Your small drug company has been asked to produce 1500 g of your new drug by the
end of the year. It is very expensive to make and your company
has limited financial
resources available to it in this time frame. You need
to decide if your company can
afford to make the drug or if you will be forced to take your patent to a bigger company.
like Merck, and have them produce the drug.
The drug is so expensive because one of the reactants, calcium chloride, costs $40 per
gram. There are three reactions required to
produce the drug. The key reaction is
"NaNO, Ca(NO,),
NaCl
The funds available to your company are $40,000 to run this reaction in the process. You
will need 10 kg of calcium nitrate to make
the 1500 g of the final drug needed. Does your
company have enough funds to produce
the calcium nitrate needed to make the
required amount of the final drug
? Or will your company have to sell the rights to
the drug
to a more well-funded company
?