Bench chemist involvement

Certainly biomolecular NMR is not the single method which is important for hit identification in pharmaceutical research. It is always a combination of techniques and a team effort that leads to a successful drug. This can involve biologists (basic understanding, assay development, bio-informatics), chemists (both bench chemists and modelers), screening specialists (HTS/natural products) and spectroscopists (X-ray, optical methods, surface plasmon resonance, NMR). 

The involvement of bench chemists with well thought out protocols resulted in functional QA Plans for each section in the Bureau. 

Whatever the interpretation placed on the interactions involved may ultimately be, in one respect the results are clear. That is, the simple idea of the additivity of conformational energies fails badly, even in this relatively simple case. Thus, although the idea of additivity of conformational energies has been widely used, it can be regarded as only a very crude approximation. Unfortunately for the bench chemist, this means that much of conformational analysis will have to be taken away from the man with the slide rule and given to the computer, if reliable and accurate results are required. 

After 30-40 years of methodological development and particularly the rapid changes of the last 10 years, many of the routine assays in use in clinical chemistry may be expected to continue in similar form for some time to come. From the standpoint of work study and work simplification, however, techniques are often still far from perfect, but, if the help of a work-study consultant is enlisted, he finds difficulty in giving advice on the simplification of bench techniques because of his lack of knowledge of the scientific principles involved. Clinical chemists must therefore, to a large extent, act as their own work-study consultants. 

The LHASA project has been in existence since 1968. During the years a number of extraordinately able graduate students and post doctoral fellows came to work with Professor Corey, almost all laboratory synthetic chemists. Whether it is the infectious enthusiasm for the project or just an enjoyment of using the computer as a research tool, not one alumnus of the LHASA project has abandoned his involvement with computers and returned to bench chemistry. They are (with current locations)... 

It is important to determine whether a project has promise as early in the development stage as possible. This section discusses some of the preparatory work required before the design of a chemical reactor can be formally initiated. In the chemical process industry, there may be an extended period of preparatory work required if the reactor is a unique or first-time application. This can involve bench-scale work by chemists to develop and better understand the process chemistry. This is often followed by pilot experimentation by process and/or development engineers to obtain scale-up and equipment performance information. However, these two steps are usually not required in the design of an established reactor. This is presently the situation with most designs although some bench-scale or pilot work may be necessary and deemed appropriate by management. 

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