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.
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
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
