From Around the Web

Here are some interesting tidbits that I found while exploring the blogosphere/Web when I should have been in lab finishing up my reaction:

1) "The Simple Dollar" is a great site by Trent Hamm. I chose to highlight his quick primer on estate planning.

Many of these things--like the master document with personal letters--I have had on my to-do list for a long time now and I just have not gotten around to it. If I croaked tomorrow, my parents would have a huge mess to sort out and wouldn't have a clue where to find my financial accounts. And yes, this would fall to my parents as I am single and quickly approaching the age where I have a better chance of getting struck by lightning twice on the same day a year apart or dying in a terrorist attack than finding a mate.


2) "In the Pipeline"--a blog by Derek Lowe is a good site for the chemist and non-chemist alike. In this post, he highlights the recent announcement by Merck that they are closing down their natural products program.

The announcement makes me a little sad. When I was in grad school, I worked for a professor who was an organic chemist---but he applied it to natural products. Natural products (compounds found in nature from sources like marine sponges, plants or insects) were the rage in those days. In fact, in 2003, Chemical and Engineering News published an article about which companies had programs devoted to natural products.

I love natural product synthesis. Yes, I know--I am biased as my dissertation was on one such compound. But I love the challenge inherent in the synthesis of these kinds of molecules. Take a look at some of the structures in the CE&N article. Mother Nature makes some of the most beautiful and complex structures.

However, I am under no illusions. While attempting to synthesize these molecules, we expand our knowledge of organic chemistry and possibly broaden the methodologies in our synthetic arsenals. We may even be able to identify new biological targets or a new signal pathway based on a natural product's activity.

But the fact is Taxol and Vancomycin are the exceptions rather than the rule. Many natural products suffer from poor bioavailability, metabolic instability, or toxic side effects not to mention the sheer synthetic effort that must be applied to a large majority of them (read: too expensive to make; cost of drug would be astronomical).


3) For those needing an introduction to chemistry, here is my pick for Viral Video of the Day--I found it on The Chemistry Blog and embedded it here. It is an hysterical ad commissioned by the EU's Marie Curie Actions research program. BTW, this is my first attempt to embed a movie, so if you have problems viewing it, let me know.

Chemistry Can Be Fun - video powered by Metacafe

EDITED at 2:37AM 5/19/08:

Apologies to Mitch at The Chemistry Blog. While writing this post, I had several tabs open in IE to blogs that carried the video/linked to the video and as a result, I credited the wrong one. This error was corrected in the above post.

In the News: Pipeline Woes

From Chemical and Engineering News (Ann Thayer reporting):

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/86/i18/8618notw9.html

Major drug companies have been taking their lumps recently as drug candidates fail to impress regulators and falter in clinical trials. These setbacks bode ill for the industry overall. At FDA's current approval rate, the number of new drug entities reaching the market in 2008 could hit a new low.

Merck & Co. is among the hardest hit. The company received a nonapprovable letter from FDA on April 28 for its new cholesterol-lowering drug Cordaptive, a combination of niacin and laropiprant.

(snip)

On April 25, the FDA also said no to an allergy drug containing Merck's Singulair and Schering-Plough's Claritin. This letdown comes after the partners reported poor clinical results in March for the cholesterol-lowering combination drug Vytorin.

(snip)

Meanwhile, Bristol-Myers Squibb and its partner Medarex learned that FDA wants additional clinical data to demonstrate the benefit of ipilimumab, an antibody designed to improve immune responses against cancer cells. The request means the companies will not be able to file for approval this year.

Bad news came earlier in development for other firms. Partners Genentech and Biogen Idec said last week that Rituxan failed to meet any of the goals in a late-stage trial of lupus patients. The antibody drug is approved for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. And Sanofi-Aventis reported initial results showing no benefit from its new antidepressant, saredutant.

So will this latest news mean more layoffs in the pharmaceutical industry?

Merck has already annouced it will cut 1,200 jobs from its sales force as its stock price dropped 7% on the day of the FDA announcement. Stay tuned for more on pipeline woes.....