Ce6
Update for those of you who got interested in the NIR eyedrops (ref NIR thread) using Ce6 as a light increasing mechanism:
We should have them ready soon. Basically, I'm just making sure that I can get the amounts right and not scorch your eyes. The papers and patents we have access to are very specific in some regards and very vague in others. As @Cassox mentioned, this chemical is used in lazering cancer cells (my paraphrase) so obviously, exploding your eye bits by tiny molecular focuses of daylight would... suck.
Progress is being made. It's just me reading and then mixing things together and measuring light bits.
For those who are ready to chip in and talk about that patent, their amounts are theoretical and were used just to lock the patent down. Got get this right so nobody gets hurt. Eyes are important
Anyone have any questions, let me know.
Comments
I looked up the extraction process for Ce6, you need very specialized (presumably very expensive) equipment and a long time for it.
"
The following procedure was reported in
Oncology Reports, 2009, 22(5). 1085-1091 by
Korean scientists Yeon-Hee Moon et al.
Live chlorella (Chlorella ellipsoidea) 100 g (dried weight) was
sequentially washed with 500 ml of water and 300 ml of 50% ethanol in
water to remove polar materials and the residue was extracted twice with
500 ml of 100% ethanol to obtain chlorophyll a rich fraction (extraction
yield 4.3%). Stirring the combined ethanol solution of chlorophyll a in
1 N HCl (pH 2.5) for 3 h at room temperature afforded pheophytin in the
form of precipitates. The precipitate was dissolved in dichloromethane
washed with distilled water, dried with anhydrous sodium sulfate, and
rotary-evaporated to dryness. The residue was purified by a
chromatography using neutral alumina (Aldrich, Brockmann, ~150 mesh)
with a gradient elution from 30% dichloromethane in n-hexane to 100%
dichloromethane. The main green band was collected and evaporated to
dryness. The crystalline powder was dissolved in acetone, adjusted pH
12.0 with 1 N NaOH, and stirred for 12 h. The precipitated Ce6 was
filtered, washed with acetone and dissolved in 100 ml of water, and
filtered to remove insoluble impurity. After lyophilization of the
filtered water solution, a fine black powder of Ce6 was obtained. The
purity of Ce6 is 93-98% (yield of Ce6: 1% from dried weight of
chlorella)"
From
http://www.medkoo.com/bio-reagents/ChlorinE6.htm
Otherwise it would sound like a wonderful home project. I'd love to order some drops too but if they're out of my price range I can understand why.