Towards the end of my PhD I started to get really into R. During my undergraduate degree at the University of Leeds my whole class were really heavy users of Origin Pro which is a really great plotting tool with an easy to use GUI. Though the only real taste of programming during that period was the use of Maple for one practical.
Marlowe is a job tracking tool for the mass spectrometry service. It is a little buggy but it is better than submitting jobs by email!!
This week I wanted to attempt a valuation of a company called Versartis. Versartis is a single asset company based around a recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH). The key value proposition here is that Versartis can extend the half-life of hGH in circulation somewhere around 60x, they are aiming for a once-a-month injection for treating pediatric growth hormone deficiency. This is achieved by creating a fusion peptide of hGH and a peptide licensed under the name XTEN from Amunix (from where Versartis was spun-out). Hence the product is an XTENylated hGH known as VRS-317 primarily positioned at treating paediatric human growth hormone deficiency. Improved clinical outcomes are intended to come from improved patient compliance as ultimately it will mean less uncomfortable sub-cutaneous injections for the kids, and extend the lifetime of hGH within a therapeutic concentration window.
As a final year PhD student there is a question Ihear a lot “So what are you doing after?”. The majority of answers I hear are either “I don’t know” or “Hmmm maybe a post-doc?”. And I think these are perfectly acceptable answers. However I think a more important question is “What are you passionate about?” as this shifts the focus from just getting a job, to finding a calling that will satisfy you.
This is a post of some notes I made in an attempt to aggregate companies where in silico drug discovery is a main part of their business. Most of the text about the companies is straight from the company website.