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to both a dye and a cobaltcontaining linker. When a O O metabolic enzyme reacts HN O NH2 N with the substrate, the dye H2 N O N is purportedly released, giving N H off a glowing signal, and the cobalt linker HO OH captures the enzyme. The array is said to be Much of the Co2+ made of over 1,000 such constructs. O O chemistry O N O originally In particular, Figure 1 leaves unclear what depicted in O sort of cobalt-linker complex is proposed, Figure 1 of the says Ben G. Davis, a chemical biologist at Oxreactome paper ford University who called for more scrutiny of HN has been revised the work on the “Faculty of 1000” website. O P OH (red). Still unclear The study’s authors stand behind their array. is the nature of O Figure 1, “as published, contains some mistakes the cobalt-linker complex, depicted that have been corrected and sent to Science,” says by the green blobs. co-corresponding author Manuel Ferrer of the Spanish National Research Council’s (CSIC) Glass slide Institute of Catalysis, in Madrid. A corrected figure and supporting information are availFigure 1 able on a CSIC website, he says. Davis notes that rigorous structural verifications of the team’s intermediates are still largely absent from the revised supporting information. Ferrer says that all the team’s structural information will be provided to the CSIC commission charged with evaluating the data, “and after that, they will be incorporated to the Web page.” “It’s great that biological people are trying to use chemistry,” Kiessling says, but she worries that the chemistry in some instances doesn’t get enough scrutiny. “There should be appropriate reviewers,” she says, noting, as have others, that no chemists reviewed the reactome paper. “There should be high standards,” she adds. Science will continue to monitor its review processes, in particular the review of supporting information, Alberts tells C&EN. “Reviewers are often overMORE ONLINE whelmed by the amount of information contained there,” he adds, “especially when an immense amount of information is added in a revision, as happened in this case.”—CARMEN DRAHL AND WILLIAM SCHULZ O
on a new array describes chemistry that experts see as unclear at best BIOCHEMISTRY PAPER published in the
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Oct. 9, 2009, issue of Science is generating controversy on blogs, Twitter, and other networking forums. The paper describes a reactome array, a sensitive metabolite array for obtaining detailed quantitative profiles of a cell’s metabolic networks (Science 2009, 326, 252). It has been viewed, at worst, as fraudulent and, at best, as a glaring example of the pitfalls of refereeing interdisciplinary research. The outcry has been so intense that Science Editorin-Chief Bruce Alberts has issued an “Editorial Expression of Concern” (DOI: 10.1126/science.1186078) to alert the journal’s readers “to the fact that serious questions have been raised about the methods and data presented” in the article. Alberts writes that the journal has “requested evaluation of the original data and records by officials at the authors’ institutions: These officials have agreed to undertake this task.” One of the first people to raise concerns about the paper was Laura L. Kiessling, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and editor of ACS Chemical Biology. “The chemistry just doesn’t make any sense,” Kiessling says. Like many other experts, she is puzzled by the highly unstable array linkages depicted in Figure 1 of the paper, characterizing them as unlikely at best. “The more I looked at Figure 1, the less I understood,” says Timothy Mitchison, professor of systems biology at Harvard University. The figure depicts the reactome strategy, in which a small-molecule substrate is joined
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BIOTECHNOLOGY Biogen Idec’s Mullen will step down as CEO in June In the latest changing of the guard at a big biotech company, James C. Mullen, president and CEO of Biogen Idec, will retire in June. The move comes after several turbulent years at the Cambridge, Mass.-based firm. Mullen worked at Biogen Idec for more than 20 years and has been CEO since 2000. Although the firm flourished in the early part of his tenure, it has struggled more recently to coax new products from its pipeline. The company has not commercialized a new drug since 2005, when it launched
the multiple sclerosis treatment Tysabri. The drug was quickly pulled from the market after it was linked to a life-threatening brain infection in a handful of patients. Tysabri eventually returned to the market and brought in $589 million in 2008, but the potential side effect makes reaching blockbuster status a challenge. Biogen does have several key drugs in its late-stage pipeline, and sales of its staple products have started to grow again. Still, over the past two years, corporate raider Carl Icahn has been trying to force the company to sell or otherwise change.
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Mullen’s exit follows the departure of another Boston-area biotech CEO. In May 2009, Joshua Boger, founder of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, retired from the CEO role he held for 17 years just as the company prepared to launch an important drug for hepatitis C. Some industry observers believe Henri A. Termeer, CEO of Genzyme, could be next. Genzyme shareholders have called for change after manufacturing problems caused shortages of key products. Biogen says it has begun a search for Mullen’s successor.—LISA JARVIS
