Derek B. Lowe06.01.10
It occurs to me, sometimes several times in the course of a week, that as a medicinal chemist I might be in the wrong business. And no, I'm not talking about going into full-time journalism. Once in a while I get invites from people who assume that that's what I must be, and I have to break it to them that if I relied on my writing to pay the bills that I'd be eating weeds out of my backyard.
Nor am I talking about lucrative nontechnical sidelines such as starting my own faith-healing business, although I've long thought that if I could just get some sort of consciencectomy operation, then I could be a big success. The odds of drug discovery tend to breed thoughts like this, naturally, since they sometimes seem to be unnervingly similar to the odds offered at greyhound tracks. But if we assume that money is a universal motivator - although not the only one - we have to also assume that spreading some around might speed things up a bit in the labs. But how best to do that?
It doesn't help that I used to work for a German company. Thoughts of the German patent system - in which inventors are required to get a minimum share of the profits from their discoveries - keep intruding. Would something like that work out here? We wouldn't have to change patent laws; it could be done as a company policy. I haven't, though, heard of a single pharma or biotech company that offers this as an incentive. The downside is that fights over inventorship can turn nasty under these rules, but the upside is that people might be even more motivated than usual to come up with things that might work.
You have to tread carefully with talk like that, though. I resent it as much as anyone else when someone insinuates that drug researchers are slacking off, and that we'd have plenty of cures for Loathsome Disease X if people would just stir themselves to find a few. But one has to admit that there is always the tendency to crank out a list of compounds just because they're crankable, rather than because they're absolutely the most useful thing that could be done at the moment. So while it's not like extra incentives would necessarily keep us right on track for breakthroughs, they might help keep us off some tracks that are might be more likely to lead off into the weeds.
But there's another problem with such thoughts: if you subsidize something, you're going to get it, even if you didn't quite realize what you were subsidizing at first. Any incentive plan is going to have to be very carefully framed, in order to keep unintended consequences at bay. If you pay the villagers to bring in rats they've caught, there's always the risk that someone's going to start a rat ranch on the side to juice the system.
Sometimes people get fed up with the odds in the lab and decide to seek their fortunes elsewhere, while still trying to use as much of their expertise as possible. And I can't blame anyone for trying, although not all of these plans work out, any more than all preclinical research programs do. It's hard to forget, though, that the biggest fortunes made during the California Gold Rush were made by the people who sold things to the miners. Those of us doing the R&D are in the position of mud-covered prospectors swinging our pickaxes, wondering if we've got enough nuggets collected to go into town and restock. Why not be one of the store owners who gets paid off in gold dust instead?
One of these alternate businesses is Supplier of Unusual Compounds. This idea hits a person after they've been quoted $900/gram for something that doesn't really look all that hard to make. "So make it," says that little voice, and when you do so you sometimes find out that yes, the supplier was indeed ripping you off, and that you could prepare the compound for only about $700 of your time. Well, neglecting some of the raw materials, which were just sitting around the lab already purchased, true - and neglecting opportunity costs for what you could have been doing otherwise, naturally. And other times you find yourself wondering why they didn't charge $5,000 instead, because you're about ready to pay it by that point.
Not that some suppliers - both large and small - don't take advantage of people, but overall, this idea looks less like the road to riches the longer you think about it. A look at the competition in the fine and specialty chemical business is enough to make you thoughtful, for one thing. And when you consider that some of these folks are bound to have lower labor costs than you do, and that even they are listening for the sound of still lower-cost people galloping up from behind, well . . . perhaps there are easier ways, unless you've got a real advantage that you can quantify. (If so, then go for it!)
How about Master Of Exotic Instrumental Methods then? Many readers will have run into this business model. Someone buys and masters a new piece of equipment, a device that's a bit of a pain in the rear to get to work properly, and sets up a service business around it. Nothing wrong with that, except at times you're a bit too aware of the pricing algorithm that's being used, which is something like What We Think the Customer Will Put Up With, Times About One Point Five. You want your compounds separated through the power of SuperPressurized Voodootronics or not?
The problem with this plan is that exotic instruments tend to become less exotic with time (since the instrument manufacturers naturally want to expand their customer base past the realm of the well-funded obsessives). And just as with the chemical suppliers, there are generally people willing to try to do what you're doing for less money. And what if someone comes along with a different technology or method that blows yours out of the water? The best way I can see working this angle is to take on something so nasty that no one else is likely to want to do it - but that might turn out to be sort of a right-angle intersection with Easy Street, unless you've got some bright idea about how to make some disgusting process less disgusting (and take pains to make sure that no one else finds out how you're doing it!)
I have to admit that - so far - I don't quite have it in me to make any of these leaps. Is that plain old fear of the unknown? Or is it reasonable caution? Or is it perhaps that I like what I do too much to leave it? Or is it just because I haven't seen the right business plan yet? I'm pretty sure that I don't know the answers to those questions, but I'm also pretty sure that none of the plans I've listed so far would be enough to fetch me. It'll have to be something even crazier. And that's the thing - there's always something crazier out there. . . .
Derek B. Lowe has been employed since 1989 in pharmaceutical drug discovery in several therapeutic areas. His blog, In the Pipeline, is an awfully good read. He can be reached at derekb.lowe@gmail.com.
Nor am I talking about lucrative nontechnical sidelines such as starting my own faith-healing business, although I've long thought that if I could just get some sort of consciencectomy operation, then I could be a big success. The odds of drug discovery tend to breed thoughts like this, naturally, since they sometimes seem to be unnervingly similar to the odds offered at greyhound tracks. But if we assume that money is a universal motivator - although not the only one - we have to also assume that spreading some around might speed things up a bit in the labs. But how best to do that?
It doesn't help that I used to work for a German company. Thoughts of the German patent system - in which inventors are required to get a minimum share of the profits from their discoveries - keep intruding. Would something like that work out here? We wouldn't have to change patent laws; it could be done as a company policy. I haven't, though, heard of a single pharma or biotech company that offers this as an incentive. The downside is that fights over inventorship can turn nasty under these rules, but the upside is that people might be even more motivated than usual to come up with things that might work.
You have to tread carefully with talk like that, though. I resent it as much as anyone else when someone insinuates that drug researchers are slacking off, and that we'd have plenty of cures for Loathsome Disease X if people would just stir themselves to find a few. But one has to admit that there is always the tendency to crank out a list of compounds just because they're crankable, rather than because they're absolutely the most useful thing that could be done at the moment. So while it's not like extra incentives would necessarily keep us right on track for breakthroughs, they might help keep us off some tracks that are might be more likely to lead off into the weeds.
But there's another problem with such thoughts: if you subsidize something, you're going to get it, even if you didn't quite realize what you were subsidizing at first. Any incentive plan is going to have to be very carefully framed, in order to keep unintended consequences at bay. If you pay the villagers to bring in rats they've caught, there's always the risk that someone's going to start a rat ranch on the side to juice the system.
Sometimes people get fed up with the odds in the lab and decide to seek their fortunes elsewhere, while still trying to use as much of their expertise as possible. And I can't blame anyone for trying, although not all of these plans work out, any more than all preclinical research programs do. It's hard to forget, though, that the biggest fortunes made during the California Gold Rush were made by the people who sold things to the miners. Those of us doing the R&D are in the position of mud-covered prospectors swinging our pickaxes, wondering if we've got enough nuggets collected to go into town and restock. Why not be one of the store owners who gets paid off in gold dust instead?
One of these alternate businesses is Supplier of Unusual Compounds. This idea hits a person after they've been quoted $900/gram for something that doesn't really look all that hard to make. "So make it," says that little voice, and when you do so you sometimes find out that yes, the supplier was indeed ripping you off, and that you could prepare the compound for only about $700 of your time. Well, neglecting some of the raw materials, which were just sitting around the lab already purchased, true - and neglecting opportunity costs for what you could have been doing otherwise, naturally. And other times you find yourself wondering why they didn't charge $5,000 instead, because you're about ready to pay it by that point.
Not that some suppliers - both large and small - don't take advantage of people, but overall, this idea looks less like the road to riches the longer you think about it. A look at the competition in the fine and specialty chemical business is enough to make you thoughtful, for one thing. And when you consider that some of these folks are bound to have lower labor costs than you do, and that even they are listening for the sound of still lower-cost people galloping up from behind, well . . . perhaps there are easier ways, unless you've got a real advantage that you can quantify. (If so, then go for it!)
How about Master Of Exotic Instrumental Methods then? Many readers will have run into this business model. Someone buys and masters a new piece of equipment, a device that's a bit of a pain in the rear to get to work properly, and sets up a service business around it. Nothing wrong with that, except at times you're a bit too aware of the pricing algorithm that's being used, which is something like What We Think the Customer Will Put Up With, Times About One Point Five. You want your compounds separated through the power of SuperPressurized Voodootronics or not?
The problem with this plan is that exotic instruments tend to become less exotic with time (since the instrument manufacturers naturally want to expand their customer base past the realm of the well-funded obsessives). And just as with the chemical suppliers, there are generally people willing to try to do what you're doing for less money. And what if someone comes along with a different technology or method that blows yours out of the water? The best way I can see working this angle is to take on something so nasty that no one else is likely to want to do it - but that might turn out to be sort of a right-angle intersection with Easy Street, unless you've got some bright idea about how to make some disgusting process less disgusting (and take pains to make sure that no one else finds out how you're doing it!)
I have to admit that - so far - I don't quite have it in me to make any of these leaps. Is that plain old fear of the unknown? Or is it reasonable caution? Or is it perhaps that I like what I do too much to leave it? Or is it just because I haven't seen the right business plan yet? I'm pretty sure that I don't know the answers to those questions, but I'm also pretty sure that none of the plans I've listed so far would be enough to fetch me. It'll have to be something even crazier. And that's the thing - there's always something crazier out there. . . .
Derek B. Lowe has been employed since 1989 in pharmaceutical drug discovery in several therapeutic areas. His blog, In the Pipeline, is an awfully good read. He can be reached at derekb.lowe@gmail.com.