Cheap APIs as precursors

Tablets and other API containing products are usually the last place I would ever want to look if I were looking for a cheap source of reagents, mainly because the API usually comprises a very low percentage of the overpriced pharmaceutical dosage form. On top of that, there are all kinds of excipients present which may or may not interfere with ones intended use of the API. I came across an exception though. Every NSAIDs I have encountered is administered in very large doses. An average dose of paracetamol is 500mg. Aspirin is 300mg. Ibuprofen is 200mg. I have a bottle of Tylenol 500mg APAP tablets in front of me and each tablet weighs around 0.6g. I hear aspirin is a good binder in itself too. I don't know what I would use any of these compounds for but living in a country where suppliers won't ship to residential addresses, its nice to know I can still obtain various organic compounds should a need for them arise. So heres the readily available, heavy dose (and thus cheap), OTC NSAIDs I know of

Acetaminophen:


Aspirin:


Ibuprofen:


Naproxen:

I'm gonna start paying more attention to pharmaceutical products from now on because NSAIDs can't be the only cheap drugs with large quantities of API per dose.

EDIT: So I decided to root through the medicine cabinet and found a 100mL bottle of cough syrup which contains 250mg/mL of carbocisteine:

so a bottle contains 5g of it. I decided to look up other expectorants for the hell of it and notice that guaifenesin:

is administered in doses of 600mg.

BTW: Look at carbocisteines structure. I bet they discovered that using one of those combinatorial, high throughput screening techniques on amino acids. I'm profoundly intrigued by all that stuff. I find it very cool that the first known ACE inhibitor drug was isolated from the venom of a Brasilian snake.

[Edited on 19-3-2012 by mycotheologist]

Quote: Originally posted by mycotheologist

BTW: Look at carbocisteines structure. I bet they discovered that using one of those combinatorial, high throughput screening techniques on amino acids. I'm profoundly intrigued by all that stuff. I find it very cool that the first known ACE inhibitor drug was isolated from the venom of a Brasilian snake. [Edited on 19-3-2012 by mycotheologist]