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.
Longtime readers (and longtime drug industry folks!) may remember the Makena story from 2011. That is a progesterone ester drug that has been given to women at risk of preterm labor, and it came into the news when a small company called KV Pharmaceuticals used an FDA program that encouraged modern trials of older medicines… Read More
Here’s an article that will not be popular among some constituencies. It’s in a special issue of the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, devoted to how these disciplines have responded to the coronavirus pandemic. And in it, Aled Edwards of the Structural Genomics Consortium surveys past attempts at drug repurposing and arrive… Read More
As everyone knows, there have been a lot of attempts to repurpose existing therapies for the coronavirus pandemic. I’ve covered several of these along the way, but it’s time for some updates. The work that’s been going on not only adds to our knowledge about treatment for infected patients, but it should – ideally – Read More
I mentioned yesterday in my post about anti-vaccine arguments that there seemed to be suspicions on social media platforms about vaccine testing in Africa. I’ve been looking around for more of that, and finding plenty of it. I’ve also heard from a colleague with some pertinent thoughts about how these things get going, and I… Read More
Among the many drug-discovery lessons that this pandemic is highlighting is the difficulty of meeting the challenges of a new target, a new pathogen, a new disease, or a new mechanism of action. When you look at the history of the drug industry, the typical time for an effective therapy to be developed from a… Read More
Now that chloroquine is in the news everywhere, I thought it might be interesting to have a closer look at the compound. The first part of this post will be chemistry-heavy, further down we’ll get into the pharmacology and medical uses. Chloroquine’s fame is as an antimalarial drug, and the history of antimalarials starts of… Read More
I’m sitting in an MIT conference on AI in drug discovery/development as I write this. One of the speakers here (Mathai Mammen, J&J/Janssen) just made a good point – not a new one, but a solid one that deserves some thought. He called for “bilingual” people, by which he means people who have some fluency… Read More
Many roots of organic chemistry, and of medicinal chemistry in particular, often originate in what might seem like an unlikely place: the dyestuff industry of the late 19th century. I had already known this to some degree, but writing the historical vignettes in The Chemistry Book really brought it home to me. And if you… Read More
Here’s a useful article that looks at the fate of university-licensed startup (ULS) life sciencecompanies over the last few years. There are more and more such companies (a greater than tenfold increase in their number since 1990), but a comprehensive look at success rates (and how such rates vary according to the universities involved) has… 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
