Nature Biotechnology weighs in on the GSK/Sirtris controversy. They have a lot of good information, and I’m not just saying that because someone there has clearly read over the comments that have showed up to my posts on the subject.

Well, it takes all kinds to make a market. And the collapse in Medivation’s shares after their disastrous Phase III results the other day seem to have brought out some hopeful buyers.

I’m hearing from more than one source that Exelixis has laid off about 40% of their work force, which is somewhere around 250 people (the numbers I get don’t all agree). This seems to be across the board, all departments, and most everyone is being asked to leave today

A discussion at work the other day got me to thinking: what structures do you medicinal chemists out there just refuse to work on?

Kim Girard, a reporter from CBS Interactive is doing a story on how people are coping with the merger - if you’d like to speak with her, she’s at (de-spammified): kim.berg30-at-gmail.com.

Here’s another outside the field - in fact, it’s outside of a lot of people’s fields. Where Is Everybody?

I will note here, with no additional comment whatsoever, that Jeff Kindler, Pfizer’s CEO, has just been granted a raise in his base salary of 12.5%. Details at Pharmalot .

There’s a report in Nature on the bacteria found in the human gut that’s getting a lot of press today (especially for a paper about, well, bacteria in the human gut). A team at the Beijing Genomics Institute, with many collaborators, has done a large shotgun sequencing effort on gut flora and identified perhaps one thousand different species. I can well believe it

Robert Langreth, an editor at Forbes, points to a possible way that Dimebon could get approval for Alzheimer’s: for its behavioral effects, not anything to do with amyloid or memory. I’m not buying it, I have to say.

Some blogs run pictures of cats to give the readers a break from the ordinary.