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The urgent need for designing greener drugs

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The pervasive contamination of ecosystems with active pharmaceutical ingredients poses a serious threat to biodiversity, ecosystem services and public health. Urgent action is needed to design greener drugs that maintain efficacy but also minimize environmental impact.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge funding support from the Swedish Research Council Formas (2018-00828 to T.B., 2020-02293 to M.G.B., 2020-00981 to E.S.M., 2020-01052 to D.C., 2022-00503 to M.M. and 2022-02796/2023-01253 to J.M.M.), the Kempe Foundations (SMK-1954, SMK21-0069 and JCSMK23-0078 to M.G.B.), the Swedish Research Council VR (2022-03368 to E.S.M.), the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement (101061889 to M.M.), Research England (131911 to M.J.), the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (PID2022-139746OB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 to G.O.), the Australian Research Council (FT190100014 and DP220100245 to B.B.M.W.), the Jarislowsky Foundation (to K.A.K.), a Royal Society of New Zealand Catalyst Leaders Fellowship (ILF-CAW2201 to B.W.B.) and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (1P01ES028942 to B.W.B.). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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Correspondence to Tomas Brodin, Michael G. Bertram or Gorka Orive.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Lydia Niemi, Terrence Collins and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Brodin, T., Bertram, M.G., Arnold, K.E. et al. The urgent need for designing greener drugs. Nat Sustain (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01374-y

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