Question: Do you help to invent new medicines, or do you just find the drugs which are needed to make new medicines?

Emily Bullen answered on 14 Mar 2012:

Hi mcalisterf, that’s a really good question!
My company does both.

The biologists and medics identify a target in the body, where they think a molecule might have an effect that helps cure an illness.

Against that target literally millions of molecules we have in a “library” are tested for any effect. This is all done in test tubes, by really fast machines. Medicinal chemists will look at the molecules that showed an effect, and see what “structure” (ie which atom arrangement) looks like it works. They’ll come up with several variations on that, and these will be be tested again in test tubes, then modelled on computers, then trialled in animals then humans.

Once a drug looks promising, then we start work on what you would call the medicine, in other words what will go in the tablet, or the powder, or the injection.

What do I contribute to? Well I make the drug that will be used in clinical trials, in people. Through the trials, that gradually get bigger and more complicated, we’ll probably need 400kg of drug itself, that has to be made into tablets. I’ll be involved both in the research for the drug and the tablet, and in writing the recipe on how to make them (and helping when there are problems!)

Just let me know if there’s anything that didn’t make sense 🙂