Money 4 Drugz

words and music by Greg Crowther and Jeff Barrett

This song was written for the 2011 UW Pocketmedia Film Festival as a summary of target-based drug development research in the laboratory of Wesley C. Van Voorhis, MD, PhD. One point of potential confusion is that the term "bugs" usually refers to bacteria, yet the rapper talks about malaria, which is caused by Plasmodium falciparum, a eukaryote. To indicate the lab's interest in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic pathogens, the rapper's posse chimes in with "Parasites yo!" every time "bugs" are mentioned.

Working in the lab is a pretty sweet gig
The people are smart and the toys are really big
But we can't be chill when our homies are ill
So we write a new proposal to create another pill

If you have malaria we wanna take care o' ya
And if we succeed then no one has to bury ya
And so we beg for grants, even though it's so demeaning
'Cause you need a good stash for a high-throughput screening

CHORUS:
We need money for drugs
We ain't no thugs
But it takes more funds
To kill more bugs (parasites yo!)

We start with expression of recombinant protein
A soluble product is a reason for emoting
We quantify its function and look for inhibitors
And find the delimiters of active-site perimeter

When the SAR is leaving us baffled
We call in the chemists to create a new scaffold
It's not like making meth -- it's really hard to do it
But we've got to break through to a brand-new therapeutic

CHORUS (repeat and fade)

• MP3

• music video (by Ryan Choi)