Over at In the Pipeline, Derek Lowe blogs about the outcome of all those compounds that are discovered but can't be used as therapeutics. After looking at a particular compound that will never be used as a therapeutic, he writes, "But all this brings up another thing that we were talking about around here -- how much do drug companies owe academia for working out fundamental biochemistry and molecular biology? What if someone uses this very compound, for example, as a research tool and discovers something about its target that could be used to develop an actual drug?" (If you're thinking that you deserve credit for establishing the foundational research that was used to create some blockbuster drug, fuhgeddaboudit.)
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