Finding the Right Chemistry

Every chemist knows that even a reaction you've run a hundred times behaves a little differently in a new flask.

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Starting a new role is much the same: I've been a CEO before, but every new start still feels a bit like the first day at school. You don't know where anything is, you try to remember everyone's names, and you nod confidently while quietly trying to match faces to names. Luckily, the Concept Life Sciences team had planned my whole onboarding, so I always knew where to go next, even if I didn't always know how to get there.

Full of hope and curiosity, I left Zagreb to spend my first days visiting the Concept Life Sciences site in Chapel-en-le-Frith. The site has its own long history in drug discovery, and great scientists here are bringing chemistry, ADMET and screening biology together under one roof.

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Chemistry has a remarkable history in this part of England. Just west of Chapel-en-le-Frith, in Manchester, John Dalton developed his atomic theory, while to the east, in Sheffield, a young Harry Kroto studied chemistry before going on to discover the buckyball and win a Nobel Prize. Of course, chemistry has come a long way since Dalton's time and today, instead of trying to understand what molecules are made of, chemists spend much of their time figuring out how to make them. Our colleagues here seem rather good at it. This spring, they won the national SCI-RSC Retrosynthesis Competition, where teams from leading UK universities and pharmaceutical companies compete to design the most elegant and efficient route to a complex molecule.

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In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet had never seen a place "for which nature had done more". After a few mornings of walking to work through the Derbyshire countryside, I understood exactly what she meant when describing it. What a lovely way to start a day! And whoever said it always rains in England? So far, I've been greeted with sunshine every morning. I'm beginning to think the British weather might actually be pleased to see me.

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I soon realized I wasn't walking alone, either. Every morning the same ginger cat was sitting on its fence post, watching me pass with the calm, slightly unimpressed look of someone who has seen plenty of new people come and go. I like to think that by the third morning it had decided I could stay, hopefully. The sheep in the next field were harder to win over. One of them watched me with such suspicion that I felt I owed it an explanation for being there.

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Of course, at the end of my first day, no introduction to English life would be complete without a visit to the local pub. A cozy fireplace, a proper British pie with gravy, and a quick lesson in local culture: apparently, gravy isn't just a sauce, it's a way of life.

In these first days I mostly listened and asked questions, and I'm still learning. But it's already clear to me why this team has helped 29 drug candidates reach the clinic.

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In the next chapter, like any promising molecule that has passed its first screens, I'm heading north for a closer look at the biology, to our translational biosciences team in Edinburgh. If you have a molecule that needs a good home in the meantime, you know where to find us. And if you're ever in Chapel-en-le-Frith, say hello to the cat. It won't answer, but it might judge.