Went to the royal society of chemistry yesterday evening for a lecture. To paraphrase Hagakure, in the stories of old men lie their meritorious deeds.

There was a big focus on a company's culture. AZ focused on designing the right compound, making sure it had the correct properties before then proving it worked. It was raised that this often isn't done in big pharma, often the culture is to do what everyone else is doing rather than sitting down with the right experts and creating a solution that works.

Quite a few times, it was mentioned that other big pharma companies hadn't considered designing a compound which gave the benefits but not the risks. The others went for the simple solution. There was a big focus on the role of chemistry, and medicinal chemists.

The rise of biological products can mean high prices, whereas small compounds are affordable to the people who are ill. There seems to be a belief that chemistry is just something that is outsourced. That the expertise of a chemist is to just make and test a compound. There also seems to be a fragmented approach in the uk to drug discovery, where the partnerships between industry and academia are few and far between. It seems we aren't making the most of our expertise.

An academic in the audience noted that his students tend to choose easy courses or easy solutions, and don't aim for the most effective ones. This indicated that culturally, we're heading down the easy path. This might not get us the answer we need, and we end up with research that finds the simplest answer and not the one that helps us get better, as we are the patients.

Much reference was made to the expanding CRO's, the hope that with their freshly acquired talent from pharma, they'll solve all our problems. Outsourcing the chemistry of drug development abroad seems to lead to disillusioned scientists with talent to spare but no position to fill.

Throughout the evening, including drinks of after-lecture wine, I found myself mulling over the problem, considering the best solution. It was interesting that AZ's strategy was to get the compound right, even down to being orally bioavailable, despite a 15 stage synthesis. It seems some pharmas prefer to fix a compound's bioavailability with formulation work such as spray-drying rather than making the compound's properties fit for purpose.

Like the big pharma companies, I found myself seeking a simple, some would say lazy solution (did I mention the wine?).  I brought up the rise of the Project Manager as something which could be culpable for the above culture, that people (particularly in pharma) can get so obsessed with meeting planned deadlines that good decision making goes out the window, and the quickest solution can offer itself up as the best. Thus a series of short term fixes end up with a long term headache. Or is it the Americans? Mergers and acquisitions convert local and national limited companies to ones which answer to multinational shareholders who are only interested in dividends and returns. The people aspect is lost when a compound is chosen based on how quickly it can make money, extreme consequences of which would be the patient dies younger than could have been prevented and the chemist is reduced to a lab monkey. As I said, both are slightly lazy answers and I choose to blame the wine for that.

It seems we need to demand our institutions to provide what we need, and government to support them. We are the focus group, and our taxes pay for what'll be provided. Let's get on with it.

Labels: AZ, Brillinta, chemistry, drug development, Royal Society of Chemistry, RSC, science policy, snacks, UK pharma, wine

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