Derek Lowe
An Arkansan by birth, Derek got his BA from Hendrix College and his PhD in organic chemistry from Duke before spending time in Germany on a Humboldt Fellowship on his post-doc. He’s worked for several major pharmaceutical companies since 1989 on drug discovery projects against schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, osteoporosis and other diseases.
Derek writes the popular blog In the pipeline on drug discovery and the pharma industry.
OpinionWould you buy synthetic wine?
Can we replicate the chemical profiles of famously expensive drinks? And would people drink them?
OpinionWe’re going to need a bigger flask
Scaling up reactions is easy to get wrong in a variety of ways
OpinionWhat are the rate-limiting steps in drug discovery?
Getting more drugs to market is not just a chemistry problem
OpinionHow science shapes our psychology
We learn to embrace the unexpected, follow evidence over opinion and accept that most experiments fail
OpinionWhat would a 1980s student make of modern research?
Nano- and macromolecular science might make for a shocking read in the launderette
OpinionThe projects drug companies wish they’d never started
Failures are common in drug research, but some are bigger than others
OpinionFeeding the confusion
When it comes to working out what foods do to our bodies, mostly we just don’t know
Opinion'If I'd discovered metformin, I'd have tossed it aside...'
Trusting our intuition too strongly highlights how little we know about chemical activity
OpinionThe three muses of scientific discovery
Inspiration, experimentation and happy accidents are all pathways to a breakthrough
OpinionWhy combination pills aren’t always the answer
The challenges of medicines containing multiple drugs aren’t going away
OpinionWill robots make you redundant?
Smart machines could soon outpace even the best organic chemist
OpinionWhy modern chemists need to think big
The lessons we can learn from the larger reaction scales of the past
OpinionFor the sake of argument
It’s important to recognise which disputes can actually be resolved by science
BusinessTargeting rare diseases
Is working on genetic mutations that affect only a few in every thousand people risky?
OpinionRise of the biologics
Antibodies, RNA and gene therapy don’t necessarily compete with small molecule drugs – and they all rely on chemistry
OpinionAn opportunity ignored
Dismissing ideas that were ‘not invented here’ is like walking past a $100 bill
OpinionMake room for randomness in drug development
Setting free the dark horses sometimes beats the most rational planning