Prescott was humming softly as he walked down the hall from his lab to his office. Good Day Sunshine, a Beatles song from the sixties. He couldn’t quite remember the lyrics, but the title was apt. The drug was working.

With the benefit of his huge mouse colony and the information on timing and doses in Weller’s paper, it had only taken two weeks to repeat the critical experiments that had taken months for Weller’s lab to do. If he pushed, he could have everything ready for a paper of his own soon.

But now that Weller was out of the way, there wasn’t any rush. And maybe there was a way to make it even better.

Prescott entered his office to find Satoshi Kimura, Neuchem’s head chemist, sitting on his couch. Kimura was in his mid-thirties, slightly overweight, sporting a thin black mustache and elegantly dressed in a gray pinstripe suit. He jumped to his feet and bowed his head in a deferential greeting. “Your administrator told me to wait in your office, I hope that’s okay.”

“Of course, it’s a pleasure to see you. Make yourself comfortable.” Prescott took a seat across from him. “I think I have an interesting project for you. Just the kind of thing I was thinking of when I founded Neuchem three years ago.”

“Excellent, I would be honored to help in your research.”

“It will of course require your complete discretion.”

“Naturally.”

Prescott got up and retrieved the structural formula for the compound from his desk. Kimura’s discretion wouldn’t be a problem. He’d been a chemistry postdoc who’d been fired for fudging data when Prescott saved his career by hiring him at Neuchem. Loyalty was his strong suit. Perfect for this kind of project.

He handed Kimura a copy of the formula. “This drug came to my attention because it was reported to help brain cells survive stress. I tried it in my Alzheimer’s mice, and it has some activity. I don’t think it’s potent enough to be useful, but I’m wondering if you could try making some derivatives that might be more effective.”

Kimura studied the formula. “I don’t know. It’s not possible to know which derivatives might work better and which might be the same or even worse. All we could do is blindly make compounds for you to test.”

“Of course, I understand that. I was thinking you could make substitutions in several different parts of the molecule, so we could see if any looked promising. Maybe give us some new leads to follow up.”

Kimura pursed his lips. “Well, there are several places in this structure where it would be easy to make some simple modifications.” He pointed to the formula. “For example, the addition of an azide group here or a hydroxyl group here. I’ll have to study it a bit more, but I think it should be possible to easily prepare a dozen or so derivatives that modify different parts of the molecule. Will that help?”

“Yes, that’s just the kind of thing I was thinking. How long will it take?”

Kimura shrugged his shoulders. “The chemistry is simple. I can get it done in a couple of weeks if you want me to push it.”

Prescott sat back in his chair. It would be worth the wait to see if Kimura could come up with a new compound. It didn’t have to be any better than the original. If there was some structural change that made it look different but still work, he’d be able to patent it as a novel compound. Far more lucrative than patenting a new use for an existing drug, a difference worth many millions.

And even more important, it would provide distance between his drug and Weller’s original compound. An abundance of caution never hurt.

“That sounds good,” Prescott said. “Please give this your highest priority.”