A good quote about medicinal chemistry

From J. Jean Cui, a co-inventor of Xalkori in an interview in an Elsevier R&D publication: 

...What is the role of the medicinal chemist in the development of precision medicine and how can younger generations prepare to make contributions in this area of research and development? 

[snip] 

...The adjective “medicinal” already alludes to the complexity of the work and, consequently, the demands on a medicinal chemist. He or she must understand biology, must be a data scientist, must be familiar with the full spectrum of assays and analyses that inform his or her design work. A medicinal chemist must remain up to date on developments, always look for new potential targets, new applications for a candidate drug and new ways of designing molecules to meet often contradictory requirements.  

Looking into the future, as more discovery and optimization work is conducted at smaller biotech companies, the medicinal chemist will also be expected to control development costs, to seek new resources, and to interact collaboratively with a growing number of stakeholders that can inform his or her work. Though perhaps a daunting prospect, this increased responsibility will be accompanied by a greater and more direct impact of his or her work on the well-being of patients. 

For a future career in medicinal chemistry, nothing can replace knowledge acquired through experience. Academic training is only the beginning of the medicinal chemist’s preparation. He or she must continue to learn from the work of designing and optimizing a compound, from the often overwhelming information that he or she must integrate, and from the people with whom he or she interacts. Important to remember is that this chosen profession is at times very frustrating, but also has moments where you advance in solving a problem and that satisfaction is unmatchable. Be always flexible and creative, and strive to do something different. 

One thing that Dr. Cui mentions here is the centrality of the medicinal chemist in a drug discovery project. Derek Lowe mentions this every once in a while when he says that "You are in real trouble if someone knows more about your project than you do." I think about that a lot.

[I do also have to note (whenever anyone talks about this, as Dr. Cui does here) that as medicinal chemistry moves to smaller companies, this comes with lower wages and benefits (combined the lottery ticket of an eventual buyout.)] 

2 million bucks is all it takes

Another way to scrape together 2 million dollars
Credit: WVLT

In this week's C&EN, a really fun article by Lisa Jarvis about Forge Therapeutics' hunt for investors
at 2016's JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. The company's founder is Seth Cohen of UCSD, with Zak Zimmerman as CEO and David Puerta as head of chemistry. Here's a fun little detail about their current funding situation:

Launched in early 2015, the firm secured “seed” funding—a small influx of cash from private individuals—to set up labs and start generating data. Zimmerman and Puerta are hoping in 2016 to attract a first round of funding from venture capitalists or secure a partnership with a big pharma company—maybe even both... 

The two chemists knew the science, but they needed help on the business side. One day in December 2014, Puerta took his kids out to play soccer and ran into another family. “Zak was out there with his kids, and it turns out we had worked across the street from each other in Cambridge,” Puerta recalls. 

It was a fortuitous meeting. Zimmerman had led business development at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and was lured to San Diego when the firm spun off the microRNA business Regulus Therapeutics. In other words, he had years’ worth of industry, venture, and banking contacts that could be exceedingly helpful to a young business. 

It turned out that Zimmerman, Puerta, and Cohen lived within a mile of each other. And they discovered that in addition to the usual commonalities—kids, soccer, science—they had an easy rapport. Conversations about a potential company quickly turned into the launch of an actual one. Zimmerman put his network to work to come up with a list of metalloprotein targets that were of interest to big pharma companies. If Forge’s novel chemistry yielded inhibitors, partners might be interested. 

Meanwhile, the team scraped together about $2 million from family, high-net-worth individuals, and the San Diego-based private investor network, Tech Coast Angels. Last spring, the three hired several researchers and set up shop in JLABS, a sought-after Johnson & Johnson incubator in San Diego where tenants share lab and office equipment. A pilot agreement with J&J soon followed.

The rest of the article is just as interesting - I think I had as much fun reading it as Lisa had in writing it.

(Isn't vorinostat a good example of a hydroxamic acid drug?)

The small company experience seems to be just as much about about "let's ask people for some money" in addition to "let's come up with some new science ideas." I should grow up about that, and acknowledge that getting money from people is a skill, and one that I should get better at.

All unhappy companies?

Here's a long article in the Lebanon, NH Valley News about a small company called Seldon Technologies with a hilarious and horrifically sad middle section when the scientists talk about Seldon's core technology, carbon nanotubes for water filtration: 

During an internal compliance review of the company’s technology, Seldon scientists discovered that its signature innovation — super-small cylinder-shaped carbon nanotubes, or CNTs — “had little or no effect on performance” of the filtration “media” to remove contaminants, according to the company’s confidential 85-page 2013 business plan, a copy of which was provided to the Valley News. 

As a result, the authors of the plan wrote, the tests “have called into question both the validity and value of (Seldon’s) patents.” 

The finding turned out to be both bad news and good news for the company. 

The good news: When reformulated to exclude carbon nanotubes, the filtration media was just as effective and no longer needed approval from the Environmental Protection Agency, meaning it could finally be sold into the U.S. consumer market. 

The bad news: The discovery undermined the company’s selling point as a cutting-edge nanotechnology innovator, the key to Seldon’s industry positioning and marketing. 

Seldon employees, many of whom asked not to be identified because they didn’t want to jeopardize their chances of finding new jobs by talking publicly about their former employer, said the discovery forced Seldon to focus efforts on developing filter technology that did not employ nanotechnology. 

“It looked as though carbon nanotubes were the cat’s [behind]*, but they were not,” said one employee. The reformulated filtration media works nearly as well, the employee said, but “is not that much of a secret sauce.”

The article quotes a lot of Seldon scientists who detail the various financial and management gyrations; they're pretty brutal. I often feel that there are way too many whiz-bang stories about startups and not enough skepticism, or postmortems. There are successes in startups, but there are many more failures.

*CJ's bowdlerization for corporate firewalls