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Matt and Brett stayed behind in the meeting room with Hilary to discuss the financial details of the presentation and the scientific team picked up their copies of the action plan and left the room. Theirs were slightly different documents which focused on the technical details for progressing the lead biological entity, namely UP-627-TK. UP stood for the University of Persford, and the TK identified the compound as belonging to the Tyrosine Kinase project. It was imperative that efficient and accurate write-ups were kept and all data was labelled with the proper identifiers. Otherwise, they would have difficulty drawing up patents to protect their invention. So, after a fifteen minute comfort break, Dr Phil Sweetman was leading a meeting to further thrash out the chemistry team’s plan of action. Phil Sweetman had initially been rather resentful at having to step in when Professor Plumpton was off sick but now he realised what a tremendous boost this could be to his career. A successful project meant there would be ample opportunity to publish lots of papers in prestigious journals. Having some of those under his belt would surely put him in line to replace the professor when the inevitable happened and on today’s showing that might not be too far in the future. Derek looked gravely ill. A raft of publications would definitely open doors should he want to move to another university.
Derek’s determination was admirable but it seemed obvious that the cancer was now ravaging through his body and would make it almost impossible for him to keep up with the mental demands of heading up a spin-off company. Phil did feel guilty for thinking like this but it was a tough world and academia was sure to be facing further cuts, this could be just what he needed to ensure he stood out from the crowd. He’d been musing on this whilst staring out of the third-floor window, looking out across the university buildings towards the town centre and the river. He could just see some hardy rowers in the distance, seemingly undeterred by the autumn rain and blustery wind. His reverie was interrupted as he heard chairs being moved and his team as he now thought of them, took their places around the table.
‘Hi, guys, well let’s make a start,’ said Phil sounding incredibly enthusiastic. ‘I don’t want to keep you too long as I realise you are keen to get on with the science but we really need to make sure we have actions assigned to each of you.’
There was a general nodding of heads indicating agreement and pens were poised at the ready to annotate the folder of notes they’d been given from the Perzsolve presentation.
‘Pat, as before, I want you to be the “go-to” person for the team as I won’t always be available to advise you. Is that OK?’
‘Sure, Dr Sweetman, I’m more than happy to do that,’ and he smiled confidently.
‘Dan, now I want you to focus on sorting out the steps in the synthesis which are at the moment poor yielding. This could be a real stumbling block for us. Remind me again which are the two worst reactions.’
‘Well, steps four and five are at the moment thirty-percent and forty-five percent yielding which is a real bummer as we are losing so much material. We have improved them a little, a few weeks ago they were only in the region of twenty percent or so,’ and he paused to pull a grimace. ‘I have a few ideas what we can do but if these don’t work out I’m going to be running out of options, that is, unless we can have a brainstorming session and get some more input.’
There was a general air of despondency descending as the assembled team knew only too well how frustrating it was to be faced with a problem like this in research. It was hard to stay motivated when everything you tried seemed to fail or give hardly any improvement.
‘Well, it’s good that we’ve managed to do the preliminary toxicology studies in mouse and rat,’ said Phil. ‘But we will need to repeat at higher doses for much longer, so that will need much more material. Fortunately we’ve got material for metabolism studies and thank goodness the stuff is soluble otherwise, that would be a whole lot more work.’
Phil paused to consult his notes. ‘We’ve done really well so far, we’ve got a lot of data on the material and even a dose projection from the clinicians as you can see.’
He was momentarily distracted as he noticed Erin pass by the door once more, he wondered what she was doing apart from wearing out the carpet by walking back and forth.
‘Perhaps, if they manage to recruit this chap from industry it might help,’ interjected Pat. ‘He’ll be able to see things from a fresh perspective, a new pair of eyes, so to speak. I hear that two consultants certainly speak highly of him.’
‘Well, we’ll certainly do everything we can to help him fit in,’ said Dan enthusiastically.
Hannah Gregson and Seth Richards murmured their approbation but Phil Sweetman seemed less than enthusiastic.
‘Hmm, well, I don’t think we should get carried away. Sometimes these industry types are a bit lax with some aspects of rigour, not used to drying solvents sufficiently and so on. You know what I mean, they have lots of money and can just repeat things, buy in late-stage intermediates and so on. Time will tell, but I’d much rather we solved the problems ourselves.’ For the moment Dr Sweetman seemed to have forgotten they were going to be operating as one big team and the academia versus industry rivalry seemed to have reared its head. He paused and appeared to realise he had perhaps gone too far, it was as if he was giving himself a silent telling off in his own mind. The rest of the group cast their eyes downwards to their papers and started to examine some of the pages in great detail.
‘Right, where were we?’ said Phil, rhetorically. ‘Hannah, I want you to be responsible for ordering bulk starting chemicals. See if you can get some better quotes?’
‘OK, no problem, replied Hannah.
‘Check with Hilary that she has authorised the signing authority for them before you get started. Now, Seth, I want you to make sure you familiarise yourself with the first three steps which seem to go quite well. Dan will chat them through with you. Stop your work on making compounds for biological screening, for the time being, we have to concentrate on this. We can’t make new compounds for test and do the route development simultaneously.’
‘Sure, I’ll look forward to it,’ said Seth, somewhat over-enthusiastically.
‘Excellent, well, it’s all coming together. I’ll get Erin to schedule another meeting in a week’s time. Perhaps by then, we will have “wonder chemist” on board,’ he added sarcastically.
Phil Sweetman allowed his team to leave the room, collected his papers and headed back to his office. He nodded at Erin who was busy at her desk and now that the meeting had finished she would take the opportunity to slip outside and make a phone call. She’d spent the duration of the meeting popping back and forth to the pigeon holes near to the meeting rooms, pointlessly shuffling post about as it gave her a good chance to overhear the discussion in the meeting. This part of the building had recently been restyled and newly partitioned offices created. It all looked very swish but the walls were paper thin and you could almost hear people breathing through them. She’d not gleaned anything much new to add to that contained in the report which she’d hastily managed to photocopy before distributing it to the team members. She was no scientist but she now had a lot more information about the front-runner compound and its code name. There were also some brief details about how the clinicians envisaged the potential drug would be administered and the anticipated therapeutic dose. Of course these were preliminary calculations subject to modification in the future once a more detailed safety profile was established. Things were starting to take shape and become clearer. Thus, she needed to pass on this information to the interested parties and she hoped that her efforts would be rewarded. It was only fair that some of the success of this venture would rub off on her.
