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.
First in humans! That’s a big step for a drug project – you’ve identified a clinical candidate with enough potency, selectivity, etc. to be a plausible drug, you’ve made it past toxicity testing (always a black-box cross-your-fingers exercise), and you’ve figured out a way to dose the stuff in human subjects. But how d… Read More
Here’s a letter from Pat Walters and Mark Murcko of Relay Therapeutics on the September report from Insilico Medicine (blogged here) of a drug discovered by AI, specifically generative methods. Here’s their working definition of what that means, which I think most folks in the field can agree with: . . .In this technique, a deep… Read More
I see that there’s press coverage today of “the first AI-generated drug” to go into human trials. Some will recall this similar claims have been made before, so what exactly are we looking at? The compound is DSP-1181, from a collaboration between Sumitomo and the startup Exscientia (out of Dundee). It’s a long-acting 5-HT1a… Read More
It’s time to talk about a new venture called EQRx. This has made quite a splash in the last few days at the JP Morgan investor conference, and it’s been launched by Alexis Borisy (involved with founding and/or helping run CombinatoRx, Foundation, Blueprint, WarpDrive Bio, Editas, Relay and others) with the aim of generating cheaper… Read More
I will cause no controversy by saying that most of the small-molecule compounds that we develop as potential drugs in this business are rather poorly soluble in water. Every organization I’ve worked in has made the standard jokes about “brick dust” and “powdered Teflon”, and for the well-founded standard reasons. A lot… Read More
I mentioned polymorphs the other day, and no mention of those should go by without a reference to the classic 1995 article on “disappearing polymorphs” and its 2015 follow-up. This is a controversial area, but what everyone can agree on is that there are numerous cases where some particular crystal form of a compound has… Read More
There were some headlines the other day about the “first AI-discovered drug”, so that should send us to the work in question to see what’s going on. The company in question is called Deep Genomics, and here’s what its founder has to say: “Making drugs has traditionally been a gambling game. Big Pharma is throwing… Read More
There are a lot of clinical trial designs out there. But one thing that a lot of them have in common is that they are designed right from the start to run under certain set conditions and to enroll a set number of people (or at least to meet certain thresholds before that enrollment is… Read More
One of the reasons that people in or near this business can write such gaudy press releases is that it has so many moving parts. That lets everyone claim that the part that they’re addressing is Crucial. Think of a car: the wheels are indeed key to mobility, but so is the engine. As is… Read More
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
