There are just some events in business that really make a difference to the industry – I expect this to be one of those events. On the 11th May the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) acquired Chemspider – it’s worth taking some time to read the Press Release on this. This news in its own right is special as the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has for decades promoted Chemistry within the United Kingdom (UK) and out into the global community with an ever expanding worldwide community of members. RSC’s mission is “to be the most effective organization for the advancement of the chemical sciences” and that of Chemspider’s “Intention is to introduce innovative scientific software technologies that can be of value to academia and to chemical, pharmaceutical and biotech companies around the world.” This shared mission of delivering chemistry to the community makes this true partnership of equals in our community and one to be promoted, enhanced and furthered as much as possible. Provide your support by using and contributing to the environment and commenting on topics and blogs of interest to you.
I guess you might say that this acquisition sort of gives Chemspider aka Antony Williams a “Chemical Royal Seal of Approval in Chemistry Search Space” in a metaphorical sense. A justified end goal for the years of thought, passion, patience, endurance and commitment.
For anyone wanting to challenge legality on the use of this statement – please accept that my use of this is not to imply or otherwise indicate that this happened, will happen or expected (of course always something to strive for), in any literal sense. Any reference in my use Yahoo’s video of the Royal Seal of Approval for Google does not indicate any way business or other relationships or interests between any mentioned parties. (Interesting posting of such a video though).
Antony Williams is extremely passionate about the quality and accuracy of structural chemistry and serving chemistry out to the community as a free resource for scientists globally. His investment personally has been immense with long hours invested in structural curation in the world of chemistry for Wikipedia and for Chemspider as a whole. Whereas, many structural environments can be considered as somewhat stale and static environments, Chemspider’s mission to have the community contribute to the quality of its content, by online curation, has given us a living breathing world of chemical space information. Anyone interested in Chemistry really should have this as a bookmark or Favorites web link in their Web Explorers.
On a personal note I applaud both the RSC and Antony Williams for making this happen and for ensuring a commitment to continue to grow our chemical space community. Please keep this going, it is an amazing resource.
Mark Bayliss
(Ph.D., B.Sc., MRSC CChem) for the complete title and affiliations (MRSC CChem – Chartered Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry)
Those of you from Pharma, and chemical synthetic industries; will be familiar with the routine and the process. Synthetic chemists produce some small, medium or large scale; matrix of substances and they want to have answers to the following questions “Have I made what I thought I made, how pure is it, and how much did I actually make?” For decades we have invested time, effort, energy, money and manpower into the act of acquiring data to support these questions. The methodologies and instrumentation have changed over the years, but the ultimate need has been an ever present and an important requirement.
For those not so familiar with these industries and processes, Pharmaceuticals, Agrochemical industries, and most chemistry development companies specialize in the need to produce new chemicals typically targeted to solve some challenge or problem; such as treatment of disease, eradication of weeds or insects and the like. During the development of these new chemicals, lots of testing, including Chromatography and mass spectrometry must be done before the compound is allowed to be commercialized. One small piece of this process right at the very beginning; is to ensure that the chemists made what they thought they had and know how much they made in the process. It is all very well to say I have 1 Kg of a chemical but if it is only 5% pure and the wrong chemical substance, then its value is significantly diminished or nothing. Analytical processes are present to determine such information.
Within many these organizations small, medium and large, we operate within a chain of responsibility, trust and respect, of the results that have been generated in all previous stages of the process. We have too, otherwise our systems would fail to continue being effective. So as part of this chain, I’d like to ask opinions on the need for checking or review of results arising from of our analytical testing of our compound confirmation processes. I’d like to also ask what opinions exist in respect of the importance of accuracy of processing for compound QC screening.
To start with, some indication of my bias might be warranted. As an analytical chemist myself by training, I am concerned about the quality of the results which either I create or I review or have to make conclusions from. So when presented with some series of results, I want to be sure of how these results came to be and what is my level of trust in those results, but at what cost do we do this? By cost I mean time, money and our already challenged teams of the people and scientists who must do this work.
So some questions that I would like to put out there are:
- Does performing physical review of the analytical QC results for compound synthesis make a difference at the level of chemists, laboratory and organizationally?
- Should this be a 100% check or some pseudo random review of some defined % of the samples acquired?
- Does this provide quantifiable value to an organization?
I’ll be following this thread up with a future blog about our experiences from colleagues and how such challenges and needs affects results in real laboratory situations.
Comments welcomed.
I feel very fortunate to have known Joseph Simpkins (CEO of Virscidian) for close to a decade now, meeting him first when he joined Eli Lilly to develop their compound QC informatics solution. Back then the focus, which is still a major part of early drug discovery, was to be able to determine which compounds had been chemically synthesized, which ones hadn’t and how pure the synthesized product was. Sounds simple? Certainly the technologies to acquire the data are easy and routine to use however as each company and group want something different in how they treat their data, what looks on paper to be easy, often turns into something more with extras needs and expectations from different stakeholders?
One of the things that always impressed me with the solutions that Joe created, including Analytical Studio Professional 1.1 that is available from Virscidian Inc., was that they were born from a fundamental need for a company or colleague to solve some time consuming and often repetitive process, both quickly and accurately. His solutions to these problems have been developed typically alongside the person or the activity and thus mimic closely the workflows and functionalities required. The solutions that he created were typically done quickly using a rapid prototyping approach whilst sitting with the chemist, scientist or end user and getting their direct feedback on what developments had been made. Joseph later in his career started Opans LLC, with his friend and colleague Kenneth Lewis back in 2002 and in the year’s in-between has worked tirelessly to produce a commercial software platform for processing LC/MS data for a number of different workflows. I’d like to explore aspects of this in a future blog. At the end of 2008 Joe spun out from Opans to create Virscidian which now is a commercial company promoting and selling its software solutions and customization services for the software.
So when Joseph approached me and asked if I’d be interested in joining Virscidian, it was really a very quick decision process that led me to the conclusion that this would be an exciting opportunity and a great match of skills and shared aspirations of both Joseph and myself.
One things that I have personally found very attractive in talking with Joseph has been the company willingness to be open to new possibilities, new directions and to deliver to our customers not just an off-the shelf product that does x, y or z, but a solution that can be adapted to meet the needs and workflows of chemists, scientists in drug discovery companies, synthetic and analytical chemists in other industries such as agrochemical, forensic, sports, food and so on. At this time Virscidan is able offer solutions in the areas of routine Compound QC, Quantitation and Biomarker Validation. This philosophy of delivering to the needs of scientists and analytical chemists forms part of the company motto of aiming to deliver “100% of what you want”.
Posted By Mark Bayliss