Novartis Closing Horsham
The Novartis site at Horsham (UK) appears to be closing down. I heard night that there was to be a (rather sudden) meeting of all the managers there today, and now I'm getting word that they've been told that the entire site will be shuttered. The company had already been talking about "redeveloping" the site, but this would seem to come as a worst-case surprise. More details as they emerge. (Source: In the Pipeline)
Source: In the Pipeline - November 5, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Business and Markets Source Type: blogs
The Herbal Supplement Industry Is Not A Very Funny Joke
The regulatory system we have in the US for selling herbal supplements is screwed up. I've thought so for many years, and we're not the only country that fits that description, either. The system is screwed up in so many important ways that it's hard to know where to start, but how about back at the very basics - quality control?
Try this paper from BMC Medicine out (open access) and see what you think. The authors, from the DNA barcoding initiative at Guelph, tested 44 different brands of various herbal supplements, purchased in both the US and Canada. They found ridiculous levels of contamination. In fact, contamination...
Source: In the Pipeline - November 4, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: The Dark Side Source Type: blogs
In Praise of Organic Chemistry
Here's something that you don't see every day: an article in the New York Times praising the sophomore organic chemistry course. It's from the Education section, and it's written from the author's own experience:
Contemplating a midlife career change from science writer to doctor, I spent eight months last year at Harvard Extension School slogging through two semesters of organic chemistry, or orgo, the course widely known for weeding out pre-meds. At 42, I was an anomaly, older than most of my classmates (and both professors), out of college for two decades and with two small children. When I wasn’t hopelessly confused...
Source: In the Pipeline - November 4, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Chemical News Source Type: blogs
Just Build The Thing
Here's a paper that's just come out in JACS that's worth a look on more than one level. It describes a way to image prostate cancers in vivo by targeting the GPR receptors on the cell surfaces, which are overexpressed in these tumors. Now, this is already done, using radiolabeled bombesin peptides as ligands, but this new work brings a new dimension to the idea.
What the authors have done is targeted the cell surface with antagonists and agonists at the same time, by hooking these onto a defined molecular framework. That's poly-proline, which is both soluble and adopts a well-defined structure once it's in solution. The b...
Source: In the Pipeline - November 1, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Cancer Source Type: blogs
Bayer's Here to Tell You That There's a STEM Shortage
So says Chemjobber today. He does a good job taking this apart, and it might not surprise you to find out that the company is actually able to find people when it offers a bit more money. It's like there was some kind of market or something. (Source: In the Pipeline)
Source: In the Pipeline - November 1, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Business and Markets Source Type: blogs
Chemist At Work
Well, now I know the previously-obscured downside of writing a monthly column for Chemistry World. This month's entry is on emulating enzymes, and it's adorned by the illustration shown here (© "The Hit Man", so it says). I just emailed the link to my wife, and after she caught her breath from laughing, she noted the following for verisimilitude: "Tell them that you don't wear a tie. And that your height-to-width ratio is better. And that your beard isn't all that fearsome." Nothing, you'll note, about my tongue hanging out. That part is apparently true to life. (Source: In the Pipeline)
Source: In the Pipeline - November 1, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Blog Housekeeping Source Type: blogs
Chemistry Job Postings: Worth a Try
Once in a while I've mentioned open chemistry positions here on the site, but I've decided that I really should make it a more regular feature. I've been worried about the extra workload that it might bring on here, but I think it might work. Chemjobber already does this, of course, and I'd recommend that everyone in the market keep an eye on his blog for information. But on a trial basis, I'll posting occasional notices that I get through e-mail, from people specifically trying to reach this blog's audience. I've created a new category ("Job Postings") for anyone wanting to put all of these together.
So here's an open ca...
Source: In the Pipeline - November 1, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Blog Housekeeping Source Type: blogs
Merck's Aftermath
So the picture that's emerging of Merck's drug discovery business after this round of cuts is confused, but some general trends seem to be present. West Point appears to have been very severely affected, with a large number of chemists shown the door, and reports tend to agree that bench chemists were disproportionately hit. The remaining department would seem to be top-heavy with managers.
Top-heavy, that is, unless the idea is that they're all going to be telling cheaper folks overseas what to make, that is. So is Merck going over to the Pfizer-style model? I regard this as unproven on this scale. In fact, I have an eve...
Source: In the Pipeline - October 31, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Business and Markets Source Type: blogs
Models and Reality
I have to admit that I enjoyed seeing this question asked: how come we still use wind tunnels in aerodynamic engineering? Why don't we just model everything in software? The answers, from people who've actually done some of the work, are what you might expect: the models all involve degrees of approximation, gloss over some effects that are sometimes important, can help you but have to be given a reality check, etc. (Turbulent flow is no joke, theoretically or computationally, as any physicist can tell you).
The exact same sorts of answers, with a few nouns swapped out, could be given for the similar question of why we do...
Source: In the Pipeline - October 31, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: In Silico Source Type: blogs
Rewriting History at the Smithsonian?
Laura Helmuth has a provocative piece up at Slate with the title "Watch Francis Collins Lunge For a Nobel Prize". She points out that the NIH and the Smithsonian are making a big deal out of celebrating the "10th anniversary of the sequencing of the human genome", even though many people seem to recall the big deal being in 2001 - not 2003. Yep, that was when the huge papers came out in Science and Nature with all the charts and foldouts, and the big press conferences and headlines. February of 2001.
So why the "tenth anniversary" stuff this year? Well, 2003 is the year that the NIH team published its more complete versio...
Source: In the Pipeline - October 31, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Biological News Source Type: blogs
The FDA: Too Loose, Or Appropriately Brave?
The topic of the various "accelerated review" options at the FDA has come up here before. Last month JAMA ran an opinion piece suggesting that the agency has gone too far. (Here's the Pharmalot take on the article). This, of course, is the bind the agency is always in. Similar to the narrow window with an anticoagulant drug (preventing clots versus encouraging hemorrhages), the FDA is constantly getting complaints that they're stifling innovation by setting regulatory barriers too high, and that they're killing patients by letting too many things through. It's an unwinnable situation - under what conditions could neither c...
Source: In the Pipeline - October 30, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Clinical Trials Source Type: blogs
More Magic Methyls, Please
Medicinal chemists have long been familiar with the "magic methyl" effect. That's the dramatic change in affinity that can be seen (sometimes) with the addition of a single methyl group in just the right place. (Alliteration makes that the phrase of choice, but there are magic fluoros, magic nitrogens, and others as well). The methyl group is also particularly startling to a chemist, because it's seen as electronically neutral and devoid of polarity - it's just a bump on the side of the molecule, right?
Some bump. There's a very useful new paper in Angewandte Chemie that looks at this effect, and I have to salute the auth...
Source: In the Pipeline - October 30, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Chemical News Source Type: blogs
Totaling Up a Job Search
Here's well known chemistry blogger See Arr Oh totaling up the cost of a job hunt these days. Time does indeed equal money, with a few correction factors thrown in, and it all adds up to a lot of both of them.
But from what he tells me, he hasn't given up on the idea of a job doing drug discovery, hard path though that may be these days. I've had many interactions with him, though, and he does indeed know the field (and can obviously write about it, too). If anyone out there has a need for someone like that, I think he'd be very glad to hear about it. You could staff a productive department pretty quickly with the sorts o...
Source: In the Pipeline - October 30, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Business and Markets Source Type: blogs
Humble Enzyme Dodges Spotlight
Here's the latest biochemical news from The Onion, which is at least as reliable as some journals. What I think I like the best is that the person who wrote this clearly understood some details about amylase and about enzyme function in general. An alternative science career? (Source: In the Pipeline)
Source: In the Pipeline - October 29, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: General Scientific News Source Type: blogs
Unraveling An Off-Rate
Medicinal chemists talk a lot more about residence time and off rate than they used to. It's become clear that (at least in some cases) a key part of a drug's action is its kinetic behavior, specifically how quickly it leaves its binding site. You'd think that this would correlate well with its potency, but that's not necessarily so. Binding constants are a mix of on- and off-rates, and you can get to the same number by a variety of different means. Only if you're looking at very similar compounds with the same binding modes can you expect the correlation your intuition is telling you about, and even then you don't always ...
Source: In the Pipeline - October 29, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: The Central Nervous System Source Type: blogs
