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Jan 16, 2025 | 
chemistryworld.com | Derek Lowe
Claims of an AI revolution in drug discovery are missing the biggest problemI feel safe in predicting a continued barrage of stories about extraordinary advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, with plenty of claims about their revolutionary implications. I should note immediately that I’m not advocating for a blanket dismissal of all of them, because you never know: some of these things might indeed prove to be great progress.
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Sep 26, 2024 | 
chemistryworld.com | Derek Lowe
The beautifully complex molecules plants produce are as inspiring as the blooms themselves
Like many another scientist, one of my side interests is gardening. I always pull Sir Lawrence Bragg (of x-ray diffraction fame) into that statement, because he was enough of a gardening enthusiast that he found an ingenious way to carry on with it when he moved to London in 1954.
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Aug 28, 2024 | 
chemistryworld.com | Derek Lowe
Source: © Katie Edwards/Ikon Images
Putting your opinions out in public, as I’ve been doing constantly for over 20 years now, is not without its risks. And I’m not referring to angry or baffled readers (although there has been a good supply of those), or to threats of lawsuits from people who feel that they’ve been wronged (there have been a few of those, too!) No, the constant risk up here on the tightrope of the printed word is that of looking like a complete fool.
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Aug 8, 2024 | 
chemistryworld.com | Derek Lowe
I’m very proud – and always have been – of the advances that have been made in medicinal chemistry and drug discovery.
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Jun 19, 2024 | 
chemistryworld.com | Derek Lowe
Having failed in the US Supreme Court, anti-abortion activists are trying other ways to prevent access to approved drugsI last wrote here in April 2023 about the US legal wrangling over the abortion drug mifepristone. To recap, anti-abortion groups are claiming that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) overstepped its authority in regulating the drug.
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Mar 25, 2024 | 
chemistryworld.com | Derek Lowe
Despite its familiarity, water is a chemical oddity. But that’s what makes it fascinatingA chemistry education gradually impresses on you what an odd substance water really is. To start with, there is no other compound with a molecular weight as low as 18 and a boiling point so high as 100°C – no such substance other than water can even exist, as you quickly realise when you look at the elements there are to work with.
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Mar 6, 2024 | 
chemistryworld.com | Derek Lowe
Biogen abandoning Alzheimer’s antibody aducanumab is unusual, but hardly surprisingIt’s not very often that you see a pharmaceutical company completely giving up on a drug that’s already won regulatory approval and has reached the market – at least not without uncovering some serious side effect that didn’t show up in the clinical trials. With many of the difficult, risky parts of the process already traversed, it should be time to sell some product and recoup some investments.
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Jan 30, 2024 | 
chemistryworld.com | Derek Lowe
Many powerful emotions motivate us in the search for new knowledgeI’d like to put in a word for a couple of motivating factors that I believe are insufficiently acknowledged in the practice of drug discovery: fear and greed. Any readers who invest in any kind of public markets will know those two well, since they are also the primary movers of stock and bond prices worldwide.
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Dec 13, 2023 | 
chemistryworld.com | Derek Lowe
Preserving the look, feel and sound of degrading plastic artefacts presents particular problemsWe live with man-made materials all around us, to the point that most of us have long since stopped noticing all of them. It’s true that there’s far more awareness now of waste disposal problems that these can generate, and of methods to recycle and repurpose such objects.
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Nov 30, 2023 | 
chemistryworld.com | Derek Lowe
Regulating the line between a vital service and grey-market profiteering is a mess‘Compounding pharmacies’ are a bit of an alternate universe in drug distribution. That’s quite a change from the way things were a hundred years ago, when compounding pharmacies were basically the only kind of pharmacy there was, but modern manufacturing practices changed all that.
