Derek Lowe is a medicinal chemist working on preclinical drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry. Lowe has published a blog about this field, "In the Pipeline", since 2002 [1] and is a columnist for the Royal Society of Chemistry's Chemistry World . [2]
Lowe (born in Harrisburg, Arkansas) got his BA from Hendrix College and his PhD in organic chemistry from Duke University on synthesis of natural products, before spending time in Germany on a Humboldt Fellowship. [3] [4]
Lowe was one of the first people to blog from inside the pharmaceutical industry, with the approval of his supervisor and the company legal department, [5] and one of the first science bloggers. [6] By 2006, his blog had between 3,000 and 4,000 visitors per day during the workweek; he covered business matters, trends and issues in medicinal chemistry, and legal matters like patent law and regulation. [7] At that time he was working at a pharmaceutical company doing hit to lead medical chemistry work. [7] As of 2010 [update] his blog received between 15,000 and 20,000 page views on a typical weekday. [8] His response to a 2013 article in BuzzFeed that propagated chemophobia was widely cited. [9] [10] [11]
He serves on the editorial board of ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters and on the advisory board of Chemical & Engineering News . [12]
As of 2018 [update] he was working at Novartis; formerly he had worked for 10 years at Vertex, 9 years at Bayer, and 8 years at Schering-Plough. [4] [13] [14]
Pharmacology is the science of drugs and medications, including a substance's origin, composition, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, therapeutic use, and toxicology. More specifically, it is the study of the interactions that occur between a living organism and chemicals that affect normal or abnormal biochemical function. If substances have medicinal properties, they are considered pharmaceuticals.
In chemistry, a reagent or analytical reagent is a substance or compound added to a system to cause a chemical reaction, or test if one occurs. The terms reactant and reagent are often used interchangeably, but reactant specifies a substance consumed in the course of a chemical reaction. Solvents, though involved in the reaction mechanism, are usually not called reactants. Similarly, catalysts are not consumed by the reaction, so they are not reactants. In biochemistry, especially in connection with enzyme-catalyzed reactions, the reactants are commonly called substrates.
Curcumin is a bright yellow chemical produced by plants of the Curcuma longa species. It is the principal curcuminoid of turmeric, a member of the ginger family, Zingiberaceae. It is sold as a herbal supplement, cosmetics ingredient, food flavoring, and food coloring.
In the fields of medicine, biotechnology and pharmacology, drug discovery is the process by which new candidate medications are discovered.
Total synthesis is the complete chemical synthesis of a complex molecule, often a natural product, from simple, commercially-available precursors. It usually refers to a process not involving the aid of biological processes, which distinguishes it from semisynthesis. Syntheses may sometimes conclude at a precursor with further known synthetic pathways to a target molecule, in which case it is known as a formal synthesis. Total synthesis target molecules can be natural products, medicinally-important active ingredients, known intermediates, or molecules of theoretical interest. Total synthesis targets can also be organometallic or inorganic, though these are rarely encountered. Total synthesis projects often require a wide diversity of reactions and reagents, and subsequently requires broad chemical knowledge and training to be successful.
Medicinal or pharmaceutical chemistry is a scientific discipline at the intersection of chemistry and pharmacy involved with designing and developing pharmaceutical drugs. Medicinal chemistry involves the identification, synthesis and development of new chemical entities suitable for therapeutic use. It also includes the study of existing drugs, their biological properties, and their quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSAR).
Carolyn Ruth Bertozzi is an American chemist and Nobel laureate, known for her wide-ranging work spanning both chemistry and biology. She coined the term "bioorthogonal chemistry" for chemical reactions compatible with living systems. Her recent efforts include synthesis of chemical tools to study cell surface sugars called glycans and how they affect diseases such as cancer, inflammation, and viral infections like COVID-19. At Stanford University, she holds the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professorship in the School of Humanities and Sciences. Bertozzi is also an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and is the former director of the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience research center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company developing treatments for human disease. The company was founded in 1995 in The Woodlands, Texas under the name Lexicon Genetics, Incorporated by co-founders Professor Allan Bradley, FRS and Professor Bradley's postdoctoral fellow Arthur T Sands. The company has used its patented mouse gene knockout technology and extensive in vivo screening capabilities to study nearly 5,000 genes in its Genome5000 program and has identified over 100 potential therapeutic targets. Lexicon has advanced multiple drug candidates into human clinical trials and has a broad and diverse pipeline of drug targets behind its clinical programs. Lexicon is pursuing drug targets in five therapeutic areas including oncology, gastroenterology, immunology, metabolism, and ophthalmology.
Flufenamic acid (FFA) is a member of the anthranilic acid derivatives class of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Like other members of the class, it is a cyclooxygenase (COX) inhibitor, preventing the formation of prostaglandins. FFA is known to bind to and reduce the activity of prostaglandin F synthase and activate TRPC6.
A curcuminoid is a linear diarylheptanoid, a relatively small class of plant secondary metabolites that includes curcumin, demethoxycurcumin, and bisdemethoxycurcumin, all isolated from turmeric. These compounds are natural phenols and produce a pronounced yellow color that is often used to color foods and medicines. Curcumin is obtained from the root of turmeric.
Bruce Eliot Maryanoff FRSC is an American medicinal and organic chemist.
Richard Bruce Silverman is the Patrick G. Ryan/Aon Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University. His group's main focus is basic and translational research into central nervous system disorders and cancer. He is known for the discovery of pregabalin, which is marketed by Pfizer under the brand name Lyrica.
Bruce D. Roth is an American organic and medicinal chemist who trained at Saint Joseph's College, Iowa State University and the University of Rochester, and, at the age of 32, discovered atorvastatin, the statin-class drug sold as Lipitor that would become the largest-selling drug in pharmaceutical history. His honours include being named a 2008 Hero of Chemistry by the American Chemical Society, and being chosen as the Perkin Medal awardee, the highest honour given in the U.S. chemical industry, by the Society of Chemical Industry, American section in 2013.
BMS-906024 is a drug with a benzodiazepine structure, developed by Bristol-Myers Squibb and disclosed at the spring 2013 American Chemical Society meeting in New Orleans to treat breast, lung, colon cancers and leukemia. The drug works as a pan-Notch inhibitor. The structure is one of a set patented in 2012, and is being studied in clinical trials.
Building block is a term in chemistry which is used to describe a virtual molecular fragment or a real chemical compound the molecules of which possess reactive functional groups. Building blocks are used for bottom-up modular assembly of molecular architectures: nano-particles, metal-organic frameworks, organic molecular constructs, supra-molecular complexes. Using building blocks ensures strict control of what a final compound or a (supra)molecular construct will be.
Decernotinib is an inhibitor of Janus kinase 3 (JAK3) discovered through a process of inhouse screening of a chemical compound library. Decernotinib also had the name VX-509 in development phase. It is an experimental drug with high selectivity for JAK3, which demonstrates good efficacy in vivo in the rat host versus graft model (HvG). It has been studied in clinical trials at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and while it was not approved for clinical use it continues to be used for research.
Ned D. Heindel was an American chemist. He was the Howard S. Bunn Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Lehigh University, where he continued to do research. Heindel also worked as a medical research consultant. Heindel's research focused on diagnostic and therapeutic drug development. He served as president of the American Chemical Society in 1994, and has twice chaired the ACS Division for the History of Chemistry. He died on June 27, 2023.
Karin Briner is a medicinal chemist and pharmaceutical executive currently employed as Senior Vice President, Head of Drug Discovery at Genentech.
Peter Grootenhuis was a Dutch-American Medicinal Chemist. Grootenhuis was the Project Leader and Co-Inventor of Ivacaftor (VX-770), the first CFTR potentiator FDA approved drug to treat the underlying cause of Cystic Fibrosis (CF) in patients with certain mutations in the Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regulator (CFTR) gene, who account for 4-5% of CF cases. Grootenhuis also led the Vertex team to subsequent discovery of Orkambi, the combination of Ivacaftor and Lumacaftor(VX-809), approved to treat CF in people with two copies of the F508del mutation. Most recently, Grootenhuis's team discovered Tezacaftor (VX-661) and Elexacaftor (VX-445), which in combination with Ivacaftor are the components of Trikafta, a drug approved by the FDA in 2019 to treat CF in more than 90% of CF patients. For Grootenhuis’ contributions to the discovery of these compounds, he was awarded the 2018 IUPAC Richter Prize, the American Chemical Society’s 2013 Heroes of Chemistry Award, and inducted into the American Chemical Society Division of Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame. Grootenhuis has contributed to the discovery of over 11 clinical candidates, co-authored more than 100 peer reviewed papers and is inventor of 65 + U.S Patents, and more than 50 EU Patents.
Jonathan Baell is trained as an Australian medicinal chemist and is currently executive director, early leads chemistry at Lyterian Therapeutics in San Francisco. Prior to this, he was a research professor in medicinal chemistry at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS), the director of the Australian Translational Medicinal Chemistry Facility and a Chief Investigator at the ARC Centre for Fragment-Based Design. He was President of the International Chemical Biology Society 2018-2021 and is currently chair of the board. His research focuses on the early stages of drug discovery, including high-throughput screening (HTS) library design, hit-to-lead and lead optimization for the treatment of a variety of diseases, such as malaria and neglected diseases.