In the Olden Days, I used to commute to Cambridge from south-west London, and to while away the long, long hours I wrote a blog about drugs and data. I used to love doing it. It was a good way to organise thoughts about why discovering drugs was so, so hard, and why there is true wonder in the chemistry that Nature has invented - no not that Nature - but the real one, the important one. By writing those ramblings and toy analyses down on a blog, it forced me to think in a specific way about the type of data science I was interested in. Writing things down is always a good idea, it turns out. I learned that too late in life. But I loved writing about my Science - no not that one, but the real one, the important one.
In the Olden Days, I wrote about the sort of things that could never end up in papers - they were either wrong, were supported by insufficient data, were too early or too late, or simply idle speculation; but now and then, those blog posts would lead to something. The (few) very best blog posts led to something specific and unexpected, a link to a new collaborator, or helped refine an idea that grew into something more useful. Many also led to long-lasting friendships that I value to this day.
But that was the Olden Days, and these are the Modern Days, and the world is very different.
These Days I'm working at the Medicines Discovery Catapult, building an informatics team, that, I hope, will improve the way we, as a community, execute drug discovery. Many of the wiser people I used to meet argued that the time for data collection and citation collecting was coming to an end, I have now come round to that view too. We need translation of that data, and that historical public and private investment into new drugs. We need new ideas, new technologies, new companies, new jobs that last and allow one to build a career. Not like it was in the olden days.
So I've decided to start writing about drug discovery informatics again. If you like anything, get in touch.
jpo
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