Ziconotide

Cyanides are not dangerous...same thing for common reagents in the lab. Do you really want 2 know REALLY dangerous materials? So toxic, that one exposure 2 them can be deadly? I will give some examples of EXTRAORDINARY toxic materials: Botulinum toxin Ricin Abrin Diphteria toxin Dimethyl mercury Methyl isocyanate Batrachotoxin Aflatoxins Taipoxin GF nerve agent (cyclosarin) GD nerve agent (soman) Dimethyl sulfate Saxitoxin Aconitine Palytoxin Maitotoxin (extremely nasty) These are the chemicals of Hell, deadly as Grim Reaper's scythe

Melt potassium cyanide with an excess of sulfur. Extract it with water and filter it. Now you have a solution of KSCN. You can get KCN by melting ferrocyanide with potassium carbonate, extracting the mixture with as little water as possible and precipitating the cyanide with ethanol. Caution ! KCN is toxic.

I am doing some scientific research on thiazole chemistry. I have to brominate 1-(2-(pyridin-4-yl)thiazol-5-yl)ethanone to obtain the bromoketone. I've tried this with elemental bromine in carbon tetrachloride(stirring, reflux) and obtained a red powder after vacuum filtration . The problem is that this molecule has to 2 aromatic N atoms and the bromine is actually incorporated into the molecule. The 1HNMR spectra shows that there has no bromination occured. I have tried to brominate it with NBS/CCl4 + 2 drops HCl conc under reflux. TLC shows that the bromination is incomplete. I have to try some other systems like NBS/MeCN or NBS/DMF with an appropriate catalyst. TsOH might be a very good idea but the problem is that can form salt with my haloketone complicating isolation. So : Which is the best method to halogenate this molecule and how to isolate the product (in base form not pyridinum salt) ? Has anyone brominated a Pyridinium ketone compund ? Thank you. Smith