Derek Lowe's commentary on drug discovery and the pharma industry. An editorially independent blog from the publishers of Science Translational Medicine. All content is Derek’s own, and he does not in any way speak for his employer.
1. Novavax Clinical Data Word came yesterday that Novavax had very good safety and efficacy in the trial of their recombinant protein vaccine. This is good news. By this point, the vaccine is much less needed here in the US, but it could be a very important part of getting many other countries vaccinated, due to… Read More
There are a lot of slick ideas in molecular and chemical biology that depend on immobilizing proteins or small molecules onto solid supports. Consider affinity chromatography: if you can tether a “bait” onto some solid matrix, you can then flow all sorts of mixtures over it (gorp from freshly lysed cells, for example) and let… Read More
One of the themes of chemistry over the last few decades has been the ability to pay attention to increasingly fine-grained details. We have new instruments that measure smaller and smaller samples and in shorter slices of time, and we’re seeing that the world that we’ve been used to is just an averaged-out look at… Read More
Here’s an ingenious new detection technique for biomolecules that builds on a number of reports over the last few years. People have been working on electrochemical detectors using DNA constructs on electrode surfaces, but this would appear to be an improved way to do it. A team from Toronto reports using a “molecular pendulum… Read More
In my experience, most organic and medicinal chemists are always ready to hear about the latest results in two branches of the science: things that explode and things with weird smells. Maybe we are in our way “singularly in touch with the primitive promptings of humanity”, as Captain Grimes says in Decline and Fall (although… Read More
I wanted to mention something that was reported a week or so ago, and may sound a bit exotic or obscure, if you’re not a structural biologist. But it’s yet another sign of a revolution in our ability to get structures of biomolecules (and others) that we never would have before, and the effects over… Read More
Well, as a chemist – one who does amateur astronomy on the side, yet – it’s obligatory that I write about the phosphine on Venus paper that came out yesterday. This one’s embargo was spectacularly leaky, so everyone who’s really into this stuff had various kinds of advance warning, but the news certainly has made… Read More
Let’s do some pure chemistry today, because an interesting paper has come out about a reaction that every student learns about in their sophomore organic chemistry course: the Birch reduction. It’s a powerful technique that will do some things that very few other reactions will do for you (such as break up the aromaticity of… Read More
Time for a word about screening for new coronavirus drugs. Things have gone on long enough for quite a few groups to produce supplies of the various viral proteins and set up small-molecule screens against them. That’s no bad thing in itself, although it is a slow thing, a very slow thing by the standards… Read More
Let’s talk antibodies. Mounting an antibody response is crucial for anyone to overcome a challenge from an infectious pathogen, and the immunity that can result is crucial for entire communities and populations. Determining who has such immunity is furthermore going to be crucial for us as we come out from under the current pandemic. If… Read More
