Thank you, NetGalley and Globe Pequot | Prometheus for this ARC for review. This was a fascinating book about how immunotherapy drugs and drug trials happen. It was fun to hear about the medications I used to give as an infusion nurse when they were in their conception and now, these are mainstay drugs for so many treatments and therapies. Immunotherapy and CAR-T cell therapy is the way of the future and I'm so happy for it as chemotherapy has so many side effects for patients and it is not patient and cancer specific enough.

Note: I received a free unpublished proof of this book, for a limited time, in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own.

Being a medicinal chemistry graduate, I was very excited to see that a new book on the topic was posted for review. Race for a Remedy is an entertaining, easy-to-read book that will be informative for professionals and casual science readers alike.

As a reader of memoirs and narrative fiction, I liked that this book chronicled Ahmed’s own journey in the drug design field, as well as the paths of other researchers working on treatments for cancer. News and entertainment media often frame drug discovery as if there are a bunch of people in goggles and lab coats huddled around a table, frantically trying to combine pieces of information into one finished product like a bunch of ten-year-olds building a vinegar volcano. Race for a Remedy chronologically frames the process in a more realistic way that encompasses the steps and considerations along the drug discovery timeline that lead to a finished product, that usually involves multiple prototypes, trials, and changes to the plan along the way. While the chemical and technical workings of medicinal chemistry can be very straightforward, emotionless, and measurable, the process of science is, in fact, done by regular human people working on schedules with a variety of other people, groups, and institutions, and this book captures that aspect of the process well. As an aspiring professional, it was very eye-opening to see how the drug discovery industry actually works in ways that aren’t necessarily covered in an undergraduate course due to time constraints.

On the more scientific side of things, I liked that the book went into enough technical detail to give more professional readers a sense of how the science behind these drugs works, and provides plenty of terms and phrases for us to look up if we want to read more detailed literature on these subjects. The main topics discussed are monoclonal antibodies, small molecule therapy, and CAR T-cell therapy. I am definitely interested in investigating these topics further, particularly given the promise they currently show in the field of cancer treatment and medicinal chemistry as a whole.

I think this book could have benefitted from a bibliography or recommend reading section, particularly for people who are not as familiar with the field—I realize that not everybody has a copy of classic Oxford textbook An Introduction to Medicinal Chemistry by Graham L. Patrick sitting on their shelf to refer back to on pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, ADME, cell function, tyrosine kinase inhibitors, agonists, antagonists, and other foundational topics. I would personally recommend the book Principles of Pharmacology by Carl Rosow, David Standaert, and Gary Strichartz, which is free to read on LibreTexts. (https://med.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Pharmacology_and_Neuroscience/Book%3A_Principles_of_Pharmacology_(Rosow_Standaert_and_Strichartz)); if this link does not work it can be found on the “Pharmacology and Neuroscience” shelf in the “Health” Library) I have not read all of this material but I believe it can answer reader questions on some of the foundational topics discussed in this book. There are some issues with font in the ebook edition (letters being squished diagonally to the side), but I think that is something the editing/publishing team can easily fix.

Lastly, readers without any particular interest in chemistry who are interested in stories about people’s careers and accomplishments in the scientific and medical fields will likely enjoy this book due to its engaging storytelling. Dr. Ahmed is a proficient and entertaining storyteller and writer, and expresses his passion for medicine and learning in the stylistic choices of this book. His style is down-to-earth and it doesn’t feel as if he is trying to talk down to the book’s readers.

Overall, I recommend this book to anyone interested in chemistry, medicinal chemistry, related fields, or engaging narrative nonfiction in genre of popular science.

Race for a Remedy is an interesting review of different drug development approaches for the treatment of cancer. Dr. Ahmed is a researcher from MD Anderson Cancer center who also spends time working in pharma-industry. He describes three different types of cancer therapy: small molecule treatment, monoclonal antibody treatment and T-cell treatment. The benefit of these different types of treatment is that they are much more specific than traditional cancer treatments such as chemotherapy. I really enjoyed learning about this novel topic.

As a reader, I struggled to get through the book at times. Dr. Ahmed includes interesting historical interludes to the keep the pace of the book moving. However, sometimes the science was very very dense.

Thank you to NetGalley and Globe Pequot for an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.