Time Scales, Viral and Human
I can tell that the current events are getting a bit overwhelming by the difficulty of writing about other topics here! I’m not specifically on a coronavirus topic today, but rather on what some of the...
View ArticleTwo Tribes
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...
View ArticleWhat Happens to University-Based Biotech Startups – And Why
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...
View ArticlePublication Rankings
I enjoyed looking through the Nature Indexes section recently in that journal – I believe that they do this primarily as a way to make a new section in which to sell advertisements, to be honest, but...
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Innovation, at Universities and in Industry
Some thoughts this morning on universities and industry and their contributions to research – and for once, this isn’t going to be another long screed on drug research in particular. No, I’m...
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Large Teams and Small Ones in Science
I had a book review recently in Nature, on a new volume (Thrifty Science) that looks over the history of early scientific experimentation from the viewpoint of its frugal nature – the idea of reusing...
View ArticleA Difficult Birth For Some Ideas
This fascinating article has nothing to do with drug discovery per se, but it has plenty to do with discovery itself. It’s a memoir of the author’s physicist grandfather, who believed while working at...
View ArticleHow to Be a Good Medicinal Chemist
Longtime medicinal chemist Mark Murcko has a Perspective article out in J. Med. Chem. on “What Makes a Great Medicinal Chemist“. As he makes clear from the beginning, if you’ve been doing this stuff...
View ArticleDecline of the Midwest?
Here’s an article at The Atlantic (via the Washington Monthly) that should concern anyone involved in R&D. It’s about the funding problems of many of the large public universities, particularly in...
View ArticleWoodward 2.0
I really enjoyed this Curious Wavefunction post on being born at the right time. He uses the example of R. B. Woodward, who was several years older than most of the other big names from the glory days...
View ArticleRead, And Read the Odd Stuff
This article gets across a truth that many people have heard as a piece of advice, but find hard to follow: read the scientific literature widely. Perhaps the bigger question is why I make the effort....
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The Flightosome
I got this diagram from Arjun Raj‘s Twitter feed, and I think I enjoy it a bit more every time I see it. Some of that is because it’s a big part of what I was trying to get across in this column, but I...
View ArticleEnd of a Year
This is my last workday of the year – I’ll be posting occasionally into the new year, but some of those will be recipes (as is traditional around here). If there’s any big scientific news, though, I’ll...
View ArticleOut of Ideas?
The Wall Street Journal came out with a series of articles on innovation in the US, and the biopharma industry features quite a bit in them. The lead one is an overview, with the theme of “The US...
View ArticleGetting Going
I’ve had a chance recently to talk to some people who are heading off to chemistry grad school in the fall, which brought back memories of when I did that a mere thirty-three years ago. A lot has...
View ArticleCompany Time For Your Own Ideas, Or Not?
Over the years, at many R&D-driven companies, there have been official/unofficial policies that researchers could spend some percent of their time pursuing their own ideas, versus their official...
View ArticleNo Scientific Method, They Say
Several people have sent this article along, and since there’s not a lot of news so far today, I thought I’d go into it a bit. The title is eye-catching: “There Is No Scientific Method”, but that...
View ArticleGrit And Giving Up, Experience and Ignorance
It seems to be a fairly slow news day in biopharma – not always such a bad thing – so I wanted to bring up a general drug discovery question. Unfortunately, I’m not sure it has a good answer. What is...
View ArticleStartups In Other Parts of the Map
I read this piece on venture capital with some interest, because it addresses a topic I’ve thought about (and which has come up several times on this blog): where startup companies get funded. It’s...
View ArticleA Professor’s View On Drug Company Collaborations
My post the other day on Phil Baran’s public-private funding ideas brought in a lot of comment. As usual, I encourage a look a the comments section if you’re interested in the topic, or any topic that...
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