Harvard chemist teases out why drugs work (or don’t)
Brian Liau didn’t want the standard off-white. He wanted bold, bright, and unexpected. To work out his new lab’s paint scheme, Liau came up with a systematic — or, one could say, scientific — process. He left patches of various paint colors on the walls for days to assess the long-term impression they made. He eliminated options, selected his favorites, and opened the final decision to a lab-wide vote. Now, morning-glory blue blooms in the hallway, sunrise orange enlivens the tissue-culture room, and a soft spa green pops up wherever an accent is needed. But within those sunny walls, Liau, an assistant professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, investigates a dark problem: how to beat cancer, in particular acute myeloid leukemia (AML), which the American Cancer Society predicts will kill 11,000 people in the U.S. in 2019. Two out of three AML patients achieve remission with chemotherapy. To help patient No. 3, drug...