ChemJam

Allow me to introduce myself

July 14th, 2025 By John Widen

Welcome to my first ever blog post! ChemJam may seem like a silly name for a blog, but the domain name was supremely cheap. If there is enough readership maybe I can get advertising, which then may translate to an improved domain name. But for now, ChemJam it is!

I took the route of making my own website with some assistance from AI bots. It might look like a webpage straight from 1998 right now but I hope to spruce it up over time and make it look more professional because I am interested in learning HTML, CSS, and Javascript anyways (nerd). I might have a contact page working soon but feel free to email me at jwiden@chemjam.com if you have any comments or complaints. I promise I won’t immediately delete your complaints. I’m also working on a comments section that is way more complicated than I anticpated. So, please be patient.

Why am I writing a blog focused on medicinal chemistry and small molecule drug discovery you might ask? Aren’t there enough blogs in this world that do exactly this? The answer is: Maybe! That’s what I’m here to find out. Of course, there are great blogs that cover aspects of small molecule drug discovery. Derek Lowe’s In The Pipeline has been a big success and very informative over the years. There’s also an insightful blog by Dan Erlanson Practical Fragments that I read frequently (just checked in and read a couple posts!). And apparently there are many others. Many use Twitter (I refuse to call it “X”) and LinkedIn as platforms, which is great. But, that is not for me. I ironically try to stay off social media.

It’s okay that there are quite a few blogs about drug discovery out there. Maybe there is room for one more! The goal of this blog is to discuss aspects of drug discovery for medicinal chemists and scientists. I want to cover topics such as literature-based approaches (i.e. patent busting), high-throughput screening, interesting drug targets, interesting articles, and maybe even some hot gossip (non-confidential gossip)!

I’ll see where this takes me. If anything, it will keep my ear to the street and my mind sharp as I type into the void of the world wide web. If you happened to take a chance by clicking on the link to see what this was all about, thanks. Hit Ctrl+D to bookmark this page and check back again soon! As a teaser, I want to cover some basic aspects of patent busting and discuss a recent paper on ApoE biology! They may already be posted or will be soon.

The site does not have a comments section yet! Hopefully, very soon! Until then please drop me a line at jwiden@chemjam.com. If you provide comments on my articles I reserve the right to post them on this website as additional commentary. My goal is to have an open discussion!