QDIS Blog

Yahoo Answers has some new features and they involve RSS feeds. I’m a big fan of RSS and Yahoo since they were the first major search engines to allow you to search specifically for RSS format. They are still my favorite place to go to find new feeds on a given topic. But back to Yahoo Answers; they have added the ability to track just about anything via RSS.

Being interested in chemistry here’s the feed for chemistry related questions. Looking over the open questions, it seems some may be homework questions. I’ve always wondered how much the Internet has changed homework and the whole educational situation, but that’s another topic for another day.

You can easily form your own query without even visiting Yahoo answers just by changing the url. Here’s one I did for Hawaii

feed://answers.yahoo.com/rss/searchq?p=hawaii

You can form your own feed by changing “hawaii” to whatever terms you want.

Another feature is you can track questions by users. You can track and see what questions individuals are asking. I find this interesting and it reminds me that you need to be careful what you post on the Internet.

While I’ve not personally found this to be all that worthwhile it could is another interesting use of RSS.

Email Ed Vawter

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One of the questions I am commonly asked is why I decided on a career in the pharmaceutical industry. My answer really depends on who is asking and what seems to be at the core of why they are asking. My short answer is that I’ve known many people who have had cancer or other serious diseases and I want to feel like I can help alleviate some of the suffering.

My longer answer is that I’ve always had an interest in chemistry from my earliest childhood and can remember with great excitement when I received a chemistry kit one year for Christmas. I found organic chemistry particularly interesting when I was in high school chemistry class. It was then that I decided I wanted to study chemistry in college; I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do exactly, but I wanted to study chemistry. Before my senior year in high school, I had attended a two week summer chemistry course at Indiana State University with a wonderful professor, Dr. Alan Siegel. Since Indiana State offered me a scholarship and I knew a little bit about the department, I decided to go there. It was probably good for me to be at a smaller university for my undergraduate degree. And although not required, I did do undergraduate research with Dr. Richard Kjonaas studying organozinc reagents and their addition to alpha, beta-unsaturated ketones, and received a wonderful education. At the urging of Dr. Kjonaas, I decided to look into going to graduate school and finally after looking at several universities decided to attend Purdue University. Dr. Kjonaas received his PhD from Purdue University working for Dr. Robert Holton and so he was encouraging me to consider Purdue. After getting my degree from Purdue, I decided I did not want to be in academia, and, since biology was not one of my strong suites, I decided to go to work in industry and focus on process development. I had several job offers in various areas such as fuel and oil lubricants and candy and food but I decided helping people and developing new medicines was the better choice.

But back to my short answer, I really do care a lot about helping other people. I’ve had a grandfather die of prostate cancer and several other friends and relatives die from other cancers so any time I run into problems I just pull out their pictures and it reminds me of why I do what I do.

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Recently Michigan State University had a news release describing Kevin Walker’s work investigating 5 enzymes that are may pave the way to producing Taxol ® (paclitaxel) from E. Coli. His group is investigating five enzymes important for the functionalization of the paclitaxel core. Having started my career at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) in the early 90’s I have been exposed to the chemistry and development related to paclitaxel for almost 15 years in the industry and now as a consultant, taxane related work is a key part of my business. While I find the work recently reported in Chemistry and Biology interesting I’m wondering if they aren’t somewhat behind in this area. BMS has been collaborating with Phyton to produce Taxol via plant cell culture since 1993 and this is how BMS currently produces Taxol®. I do think this could potentially be useful for next generation taxane products. While there have been numerous derivatives described in the literature and in patents, with the exception of Taxotere® (doectaxel), none have yet been brought to market.

While I’m hopeful that some of these derivatives may hold hope for the future. Paclitaxel and most derivatives all suffer from poor solubility and problems with formulation. I spent five years at a previous employer working on putting paclitaxel and other drugs on a poly-amino acid polymer which dramatically improved both solubility as well as drug distribution to the tumor tissue. I think the combination of these drugs with appropriate polymer backbones is a promising technology for the future.

Technorati Tags: Taxol

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Seems there has been a lot of negative press regarding the pharmaceutical industry lately. One of these is that GlaxoSmithKline has agreed to pay $14 million to 49 states for costs related to Medicaid payments for Paxil. This suit was brought by New York Attorney General Mark Spitzer and the accusation is that Glaxo used fraudulent tactics to delay generic competition. Glaxo also agreed to publicly disclose information from its clinical trials.

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I found this article interesting stating that Genentech has chosen Hillsboro, Oregon as a site for future expansion of a “finish/fill” facility. This is good news for Oregon as it will bring about 300 jobs by 2015 to the area. I have stated on several occasions to people in the Oregon Bioscience Association that this is the sort of facility that fits well with some of the trained people in the area. This area of Oregon has been known as the Silicon Forest because of the number of silicon related companies in the area. However, layoffs due to downturns in the semiconductor industry has resulted in folks who have experience working in controlled environments being available. Some of the same processes and training for keeping an area clean and free of containments apply to both industries. I’m glad to see Oregon finally getting more of a biotech/biopharma industry into the state.

In the interest of full disclosure, I do own a few shares of Genentech stock.

Email Ed Vawter

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