Pharmaceutical chemist, Derek Lowe, at Corante’s In the Pipeline notes that yesterday was the end of his employment at the Wonder Drug Factory due to a site closure. I’ve admired Dr Lowe since I began reading blogs because he puts a human face on the travails of a bench-level pharmaceutical industry researcher. His thoughtful discussions of chemistry, the industry, and careers for young scientists has put Derek at the top of my reading list most mornings.

Despite the missteps often attributed to pharma execs or marketers, Derek shows that the average pharma scientist is just like the rest of us – highly-principled, hard-working, and an ambassador for our respective disciplines. Derek always gives us a great glimpse of real-life, front-line concerns in modern pharmaceutical research. His recent post on what academic scientists can do who want to help discover drugs is great and stimulated a great, cross-disciplinary comment thread that makes for great reading no matter where you are.

I know from SiteMeter that some pharma folks check in here regularly, so I’d like to note that while Derek is still pursuing new employment leads, he has posted that he is available for hire as a consultant. Even if you are an academic researcher who does drug discovery-related research might want to make note of Derek’s contact information. I’m sure there are many folks out there who could make use of Derek’s 17 years of experience in preclinical drug development.

But just as a science blogger, Derek is a great part of this community. I have never met him in the meat-world, but I did note in my very first post that he was one of my inspirations to start my own blog.

I’m sure that Derek would most like to be re-employed as a pharmaceutical chemist as soon as possible, but I’m sure that it wouldn’t hurt for ScienceBlogs bloggers and readers to go over to In The Pipeline and send Derek our best wishes.