Remember When?

Remember how we used to generate research reports?

"The scientist in a pharmaceutical company prepares his compound documents, using a variety of text and graphics systems, in a laborious cut-and-paste procedure, and transmits a hard copy to a records center, where photocopies and microforms are made and indexing takes place. When the end-user wants to retrieve his report, he asks an intermediary to do a search. The result will be a report number or access address. The hard-copy report then has to be manually retrieved, perhaps copied or printed, and delivered by mailman to the end-user. . . it is also evident that research end-users are not accessing full-text online databases to any large extent."

 - From J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci., 1991

It's truly amazing how quickly technology has accelerated online publication in the intervening two decades.

Public library lintel, USA

Update (Aug 3) - Derek Lowe weighs in:

@SeeArrOh Yep, that's how my continuation exam in grad school was done. Typewriter, plastic template, rub-on letters. Just before @Chemdraw.
— Derek Lowe (@Dereklowe) August 4, 2014

Coming Soon: Free Online MedChem Course

(Looks like I get the same emails as Chemjobber does!)

Prof. Erland Stevens of Davidson College will be offering an introductory medchem course through EdX:

The seven-week course starts on March 10^th.  Each week has about 1 hour of video and a number of accompanying web pages.

The course is strictly an introduction.  A short syllabus is below.

Week 1 – brief history of medicinal chemistry, introduction to drug development process and regulatory approval

Week 2 – proteins (enzymes and receptors) as drug targets, enzyme inhibition, ligand-receptor binding theory

Week 3 – pharmacokinetics (compartment models, Vd, clearance)

Week 4 – metabolism, phase I, phase II, prodrugs, genetic variability

Week 5 – drug-target complementarity, drugs as part of chemical space, chemical libraries

Week 6 – lead discovery, screening, filtering hits by metrics/structural alerts/predicted PK, SOSA, natural products

Week 7 – lead optimization, functional group replacements, isosteres, directed libraries, peptidomimetics

The overall goal of the course is to get a student up to speed to watch a medicinal chemistry lecture (and maybe even ask a question at the end).

**If anyone signs up and completes this course, I'd love to get their impressions of it for a follow-up post!

Digging Nobel Data

The hot topic in the chemblogosphere this past week? The 2012 Nobel Prizes.

Just after the fervor had died down, Samuel Arbesman over at Wired wrote a piece about data mining the Nobel prize nominees. Well, there goes my weekend!

Sea Creature? Alien ship? Nope, just a light fixture.

See, the Nobel foundation (wisely) restricts release of the nominations until 50 years have passed. Thus, the data are somewhat dated, and they're not available online for all the prizes yet; sadly, Chemistry currently lacks any nomination data. But, ironically, a fully searchable database exists for Physiology and Medicine prize nominations, ca. 1900-1951.

Raw Hits - Playing around, I entered in terms one might choose for interdisciplinary awards: chem (235 hits), drug (only 7 hits!), crystal (54 hits), antibiotics (28 hits), and reaction (84 hits).

Usual Suspects - Future winners no doubt collect their share of early nominations, such as Waksman (streptomycin, 43 nods), Fleming (penicillin, 34 nods), and Ehrlich (chemotherapy / staining, 73 nods).

Superlatives - Obviously, the "career prize" aspect of the Nobel entered into judging quite early. Paul van Grutzen nominated Emil Abderhalden in 1917, saying "With great elegance [he] has solved many problems in chemistry." Two nominators in 1901 and 1905 nominated Albert von Koelliker for "A 60 year career in anatomy." In 1950, 10 nominators chose to "stuff" the ballot box in favor of Edward Kendall "...for his notable contributions to biochemistry."

Special Award Goes to...Prof. Jacques Loeb (UChicago / UC-Berkeley / Rockefeller). Far as I can tell, Dr. Loeb wins for most nominations in this category - 79 times, from 1901-1924 - without winning the Prize. His work involved artificial parthenogenesis, inducing egg cells to begin division without prior fertilization, using chemical signalling molecules and UV light.

Readers: Have fun with the database, and let me know what you find in the comments!