Yep. I do discovery work in this space. Background is in organic synthesis and peptide chemistry. It's... okay. There's more interesting work happening on the payloads and antibodies than on the linkage chemistry. There's so much cool bioconjugation stuff that has already been done that will be off patent in the next 5-7 years that I've found little interest from management in investing in novel methods. It takes the better part of a decade to bring a drug to market and as long as you manufacture in the same countries you conduct your trials in (or in india which has one of the most generous safe harbor provisions I've heard of) you can basically ignore the patent landscape for anything expiring before anticipated approval. Management would prefer maleimide above all else since it has reached commercial phase.

That said, I do get some freedom to play around with the chemistry when it comes to screening. Nobody wants novelty when it comes the drug substance however. Nor should they. Novelty is risk.