Just thought I'd say a quick congratulations to some of my colleagues in Dundee for their recent success in the fight against malaria. Serious piece of work by some serious scientists!

I moved to Dundee from Nottingham in May 2013 and was eager to continue my voluntary role as a STEMNet Ambassador.

My first opportunity to do so came just after the summer holidays finished, when I was asked to take part in a "Chemistry at Work" event for the RSC. The focus of this event is to have a more practical demonstration of the realities of my work. This proved to be quite a challenge, as I am a medicinal chemist and it is very difficult (if not impossible) to replicate my work in a safe and timely manner. Medicinal chemistry and drug design can take up to 15 years of hard toil and there was no way I could fit that into a 45 minute slot!!

Inspiration struck when I thought about the money involved in drug discovery. The average cost of getting a new drug all the way to market is in the billions of dollars. The majority of this money is actually not spent directly by us chemists at the bench, but rather when the compound is put into human trials. A medicinal chemist must be a billion dollars sure his/her compound will make it all the way! This requires the selection of a molecule that has the optimal balance of many different parameters, including biological activity, toxicity, solubility etc.

I presented the students with real molecules and data (taken from a case study of the discovery of Onglyza) and asked them to pick their clinical candidate, making sure they worked in teams to identify the best compound. All of the students succesfully identified either the actual drug, or the back-up compound that also was succesful in clinical trial. Teachers really appreciate a real-life example of problem solving and considering more than one piece of data at a time to make a decision. In the future I plan to have another similar problem to give to teachers as a homework assignment/further discussion.

I've attached the handout I used - please feel free to use it.