In the midst of an interesting article about Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs at the New York Times, this rather risible statement:
And results from a clinical trial reported last week indicate that Wegovy can do more than help people lose weight — it also can protect against cardiac complications, like heart attacks and strokes.
But why that happens remains poorly understood.
“Companies don’t like the term trial and error,” said Dr. Daniel Drucker, who studies diabetes and obesity at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute in Toronto and who consults for Novo Nordisk and other companies. “They like to say, ‘We were extremely clever in the way we designed the molecule,” Dr. Drucker said.
But, he said, “They did get lucky.”
C'mon. That's ridiculous. I'm not a medicinal chemist, but I've talked to enough to know that most (if not all) of them acknowledge the role of luck in their work. Sure, there's plenty of talk about 'rational drug design', but I think enough folks talk about 'serendipity' as well.
We say it in conversations with each other, not in the press. In the press, we're brilliant designers tweaking out the secrets of the universe, and eminently worthy of funding.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he's spent lots of time with small biotech/pharma companies? If you're a small company, the way to get funding is to say that you have some magical understanding of a phenomenon , so that if you buy into them or work with them, you can get the benefits of it. People like platforms (intellectual and technical) because they promise that you can get lots of drugs or products and not just one, whereas with serendipity hitting one doesn't mean you have any idea that you can find another.
ReplyDeleteIt is arrogant and ridiculous, though. - Hap