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.
I wanted to note something today that won’t make many headlines outside of biopharma, but it’s just the sort of story that I wish more people knew about. Let’s start with this: there’s a terrible disease called IPF, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Anyone with any medical background knows to beware the word “idiopathic&# Read More
Here’s a topic that came up in my Twitter feed the other day – I fear it’s unanswerable, but I’d like to hear what people have to say about it. Drug discovery projects start, of course, from a selection of possible chemical matter and chemical series, and they eventually narrow down to a clinical candidate. Read More
Hot new technologies! We have waves of them in this business, and everyone talks about them, spends money looking at them, and does deals with small companies who are formed around them. But then reality sets in: only a few of these things march forward into the clinic, and even fewer emerge on the other… Read More
This is quite a synthetic chemistry accomplishment: the halichondrin derivative E7130 has been synthesized on an 11-gram scale by the Kishi group (open-access paper). I’ve copied that structure directly from the published paper, because there’s just not enough time this morning to redraw it! This would surely be the most complex natural… Read More
The recent post here on automation in chemistry (especially medicinal chemistry) is a good intro for this paper in ACS Med. Chem. Letters. It’s from David Parry, who led Cyclofluidic, and I’ve blogged about them a few times over the years. That was a company formed in 2008 in the UK to try to develop… Read More
This is a solid article by Jeffrey Flier (open-access in the Journal of Clinical Investigation) on the roles of academia and industry in drug discovery. Which is a topic that refuses to go away. I am prepared to swear that before starting this blog I had no idea of how many people are convinced that… Read More
We now have an updated look at clinical success rates in the industry, and it’s a timely topic. Last year there were 59 approvals by the FDA (a new record), and the year before was good as well. So the question is always whether such numbers are artifacts, random noise, or part of a real… Read More
Academic research and industrial drug discovery have always been on separate paths, but my impression is that the two understand each other better now than they have at any time during my career. That’s in no small part due to the number of industrial scientists who have moved into academia (itself in no small part… Read More
This piece in STAT is well worth a read. The author, Adam Rosenberg of Rodin Therapeutics, is ready to ditch rodent-centric models for human CNS disease, and I can see where he’s coming from. I’ve often said that when I think back on my Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia drug discovery days (back when I was first… Read More
I have not been a fan of Patrick Soon-Shiong and his approach to the biopharma business (and the publicity thereof). There’s a new lawsuit that (should its accusation hold up) will make anyone even less of a fan. Here’s a rundown at Endpoints, and one at Forbes. It’s a mess, so I’ll try to untangle… Read More
