MedChemSchool – changing with the times
With this year’s Medicinal Chemistry Residential School starting on June 11, Andrew Davis, of AstraZeneca, and Simon Ward, of Sussex Drug Discovery, take a look through the course’s 33-year history, and why it is more relevant than ever.
The Royal Society of Chemistry Medicinal Chemistry Residential School is the longest running and most highly valued short course for medicinal chemists in the world. For over 33 years, it has been a starting point for thousands of medicinal chemists, including some of our industry’s leading lights.
The course, pitched at medicinal chemists in their first few years in industry, is designed to ease their transition from an often pure synthetic chemistry training into fully fledged medicinal chemists, who can integrate information from biology, drug metabolism, toxicology and pharmaceutical properties into design hypotheses that can lead to candidate drugs.
By industry, for industry
The first course was held in 1981, and designed by Robin Ganellin and Anthony Roe. It was designed by industry, for industry, and its successful format of introductory talks, hands-on practical workshops and case studies has remained unchanged over the years.
But while the course stays true to its roots and its structure remains unchanged, the content has certainly moved with the times. It is now unthinkable that toxicology was not part of the course until about 10 years ago. Likewise, important themes such as target validation and pharmaceutical development were not covered until recently.
Meanwhile new themes, such as fragment-based drug discovery and structure-based drug design, while once novel features of case studies, are now covered as a core part of the curriculum.
Hands-on experience
One of the highlights of the course has always been the workshops, run by tutors who are all expert practitioners in their respective fields. The workshops are intensive, interactive and fun, and cover aspects of drug design including optimising a lead, physical property-based drug design, drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics, and computational methods.
Fundamental science lectures run throughout the week and provide support for the workshops.
Over the years discussions and graph paper exercises have evolved into hands-on experience with advanced software tools and real-life data.
The most popular workshop however still uses semi-log graph paper – in the 1980s it was cutting edge, but nowadays it is often the delegates’ first (and last) experience of it.
Real world scenarios
Towards the end of the week the delegates have the opportunity to practise everything they’ve learned with a real-world scenario. It is now usual practice in the pharmaceutical industry for one company to design and test a new drug, before ‘out-licensing’ it to another company who takes the drug to a global market, and the activity is designed to replicate this scenario as realistically as possible.
In teams of five the delegates play the role of the global company – they receive a ‘pitch’ from the out-licensing company, and then have the rest of the day to evaluate the package and decide whether to in-licence the new product or not. The activity finishes with a presentation, and teams are rewarded for the quality of their assessment and presentation, teamwork, and creativity.
This is the kind of activity they may face in their day jobs, and the first edition of the workshop was a great success. It will return in 2017 where it is likely to cement its place as a permanent fixture of the course.
Other highlights include the case studies, which enable the delegates to see the principles they have learned applied in real-life projects at a mature stage of development. Some of the industry’s blockbuster drug stories were first heard on this course while still in development.
Dedicated tutors
The heart and soul of the course are its dedicated tutors. Many of them were once attendees and have now come back to pass on their experience to the next generation of medicinal chemists.
For example previous attendee Simon Ward is now Professor of Drug Discovery at University of Sussex and runs the lead optimisation workshop and associated lectures.
Andrew Thomas, now global head of Medicinal Chemistry at Roche, has given some of our most interesting recent case studies, and enthusiastically joined the 2015 Due Diligence workshop in-licencing 'board'.
Bob Ings and Colin Vose, who run the Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics lectures and workshop, have been tutoring on the course since the late 1980s, and maintain the course’s supply of semi-logarithmic graph paper.
Andy Davis never 'escaped'. He attended as a delegate in 1991, and returned as tutor in 1993 and eventually became scientific lead. In 2017 Simon Ward will pick up the baton as scientific lead.
Medicinal chemistry handbook
The book 'Handbook of Medicinal Chemistry – Principles and Practice' was first published in 1994 by the Royal Society of Chemistry as a spin-out from the course. Now in its 3rd edition, it describes modern-day drug discovery philosophy with case studies and examples, and is accompanied by an iPad app, the Medicinal Chemistry Toolkit.
The idea behind the app is to make tools for academic drug researchers as widely available as possible. These tools may previously have only existed behind corporate firewalls or even only in articles buried in the paper literature.
The best job in the world
The course has moved with the times, and remains as relevant today as it was 33 years ago. Every year it is oversubscribed and we now have an increasing number of PhD students and postdocs, as well as delegates from established and start-up biotechnology companies all over the world.
The course’s message has always been consistent to the young delegates: "You have the best job in the world – you design life-changing medicines. Go back and apply your learnings to deliver the medicines of the future."
We hope the course does indeed continue to inspire the drug designers of the future.
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