And, because chemists are increasingly likely to be members of multidisciplinary teams, perhaps as leader in one project and in a supporting role in another, teamwork skills are also more important than ever. “Chemistry used to be much more linear, both as it was taught in school and practised in industry, but this is rapidly changing. The lone wolf is a rarity now as a successful model for a drug-discovery chemist,” says Kaldor.

Research strategies are also evolving rapidly. Dave Hangauer, of the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Buffalo, New York state, designs and tests protein kinase inhibitors using small-molecule libraries produced both by solution and solid support synthesis. He explains that, because the number of possible compounds in molecular space is far too large to screen, workable combinatorial libraries depend on astute initial hypotheses to steer the output towards a manageable subset.