COLLABORATIONS BETWEEN CHEMISTS AND BIOLOGISTS - Collaborative Computational Technologies for Biomedical Research - page 114

To bridge the gap, scientifi c “opinion leaders” have suggested that biologists
and chemists should collaborate to help solve the problems of human health
and disease. But in practice these “leaders” generally act to punish true col-
laborations by reducing funding and other amenities that biologists and chem-
ists have if they worked independently (e.g., a top biologist and a top chemist
can each generally readily get a $250,000-per-year grant independently doing
innovative research, but when working together reviewers, administrators, etc.,
balk at giving the two working together a $500,000-per-year grant). I know
this because I have done the experiment. So, not surprisingly, what has hap-
pened in the past 20 years or so is biologists and chemical biologists (chemists
working in biology) have resorted to data collecting. Genomics, proteomics,
metabolomics, structural biology [X-ray and nuclear magnetic resonance
(NMR)], chemical libraries, high-throughput assays, and so on, have been
essentially data - collecting exercises. The “ exciting discoveries ” are made by
robots, machines, and computers which collect enormous amounts of data. In
the process human thought often seems to have become of secondary impor-
tance. At the same time, creative collaborations between chemists and biolo-
gists are often marginalized and starved for the resources they need to
scientifi cally investigate the very diffi cult problems of understanding life pro-
cesses and how disease and other dysfunctions arise and what might be done
to fully understand these processes. In many ways, it is a tragedy for both
chemistry and biology. I certainly realize that the cult of the individual domi-
nates our society and its award systems, and our power structures, especially
in science, enforce the myths which form the basis for our scientifi c culture.
Clearly a less arrogant and more collaborative scientifi c culture will happen
only slowly and incrementally. Nonetheless, it seems clear that we will never
solve the problems of human health and disease until we chemists and biolo-
gists (and other scientists) work together as equals in true collaboration,
without arrogance of fi elds, to solve these complex problems.
I believe that it is possible to develop such collaborative interactions and
have spent most of my 45 years in science as a chemical biologist trying to do
that. Using a few examples taken from my own efforts with biologists, I will
try and illustrate how daily collaborations with biologists have led to novel
insights into biology using chemistry and the way in which the chemistry of
biology is manifested. Some aspects of these efforts have already been dis-
cussed in the literature [1 - 3] .
7.2 ORGANIZING SUCCESSFUL COLLABORATIONS BETWEEN
CHEMISTS AND BIOLOGISTS TO SOLVE IMPORTANT PROBLEMS
IN CHEMICAL BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
It goes without saying (it seems so obvious) that any successful collaboration
between chemists and biologists comes with the recognition that the scientifi c
problem in biology, or drug design, or some aspect of medicine requires that