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Sometimes it’s frustrating being in the business of servicing an industry so manifestly important and so manifestly stupid. I started OpenEye to help those I had come to know in pharma do a better job, enjoy their work more, and further the science of drug discovery. And I think we’ve done okay: shape has become a routine way of finding new or better molecules; 3D is no longer seen as difficult.

In my last post, I ranted on about the problems surrounding contributions by academics to molecular modeling, and cited as a particular issue the Bayh-Dole Act (BD), which enabled and encouraged academic institutions to patent the intellectual property arising from government funded research.

In August, I gave a talk at the Boston ACS meeting about the contribution of academics to molecular modeling. Okay, their lack of contribution to molecular modeling. I might even have had a slide that read, “If all academic research into modeling disappeared tomorrow, it would make no difference… to the drug discovery industry. Discuss.”