How to Become a Pharmaceutical Scientist
As a pharmaceutical scientist, you will play a crucial role in coming up with pharmaceutical therapies that are meant to enhance the well-being of everyone.
Pharmaceutical scientist works in the development of new drugs, methods and therapies for the benefit of the whole society. The scientists are usually specialists in their fields and they work on a specialized field of the vast pharmaceutical sector. You will not be communicating with the patients on daily basis like in other fields but the research work you will be doing will benefit the entire population for a long time, hence it’s a different approach of serving the society.
In this scientific field you will be working on any specific domain of this drug development process. For example, you may be interested in biotechnology field,working and researching on biotechnological products, treatment procedures and marketing them. You maybe interested in pharmacokinetic pathways as to how the drug is affecting your body or how the body is transforming the drug. You can also concentrate on the application of science and technology in the process of drug manufacturing. You may also work on ensuring the safety and quality of drugs being made.
As a pharmaceutical scientist, you will play a crucial role in coming up with pharmaceutical therapies that are meant to enhance the well-being of everyone. Unlike a pharmacist, however, you won’t be explaining how to take a particular medicine to patients. You won’t even be educating physicians on which drugs are best for various medical conditions.Instead, you will be doing most of your work in the laboratory where you will be doing research on new drugs. That means you will be at the forefront of new therapeutic discoveries for conditions for which the existing cures have not yet been found, or if there are already available medications, you will try to improve the existing ones so that they become more potent yet produce little or even no side effects.
Pharmaceutical Careers:
Pharmaceutical science is avast field. Most pharmaceutical scientists will specialize in one aspect of pharma research rather than try to encompass the whole enchilada. Many scientists have drug discovery careers, researching and designing new drugs using natural or artificial ingredients. There’s no shortage of other career paths, however:
- Find new ways to use existing drugs to treat disease.
- Study disease to gain a better understanding of how to fight it with drug treatments.
- Study the human response to drugs, with the endgame of developing safer drug regimens with fewer side effects.
- Determine the most effective dosage for a specific drug treatment.
- Improving the drug-manufacturing process.
- Work to keep the quality of prescription medications high.
A pharmaceutical scientist doesn’t work alone. Creating new medicines requires large teams with a variety of expertise. The exact day-to-day routine will vary with the specialization you choose. If you go for a drug discovery career, for instance, a given project may involve examining thousands of compounds before finding the right one. Research projects are long-term endeavours’; it can easily take a couple of decades from starting the research to having the drug available in local pharmacies.
To succeed as a pharmaceutical scientist requires a deep love for science and drug development. You need to be highly observant since you will be dealing with research data and samples. If you are not used to noticing the subtle changes in the results of your experiment, you could arrive at the wrong conclusions. Critical thinking and analysis are also very important in this profession. Since you will be working with fellow scientists and explaining the results of your research to non-technical personnel like the business team of the drug development firm you are working for, excellent oral and written communication skills are a must.
Why Become a Pharmaceutical Scientist?
For individuals who are inclined to doing research studies and are interested in a science-based career, becoming a pharmaceutical scientist is a great career match. The other reason is in the nobility that this profession brings. Not everyone has the opportunity to develop drugs that can help humanity by coming up with drugs that can cure diseases. A career as a pharmaceutical scientist puts one at the front line of drug development. On the practical side, this is a career that is also financially rewarding.
Pharmaceutical Scientist Work Environment:
The range of potential research jobs is quite wide. Pharmaceutical scientists work for drug manufacturing and biotech companies but they also work for contract research organizations, small companies that handle outsourced research and government agencies. The most common government agencies where these professionals can be found are the state dug laboratories and Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission. National laboratories like the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad and various CSIR Labs also hire pharmaceutical scientists. They also teach at universities and colleges. The work schedule is often full-time, with most spent in the laboratory or in their offices.Since they may deal with potentially dangerous chemicals and substances, extra precautions are needed to protect themselves and ensure a safe working environment. The stress level can be high especially if the management already expects results and laboratory tests have not yielded favorable ones so far.
Qualifications Required to Join the R&D Department of the Pharma Sector: To become a pharmaceutical scientist, the minimum educational requirement is a bachelor’s degree in pharmaceutical sciences, biology, pharmacy, chemistry, engineering or medicine. An undergraduate degree is sufficient for entry-level positions in different departments of pharma sector like in production or quality control.
Postgraduate In Pharmacy education is necessary for those who want to teach in the academe, do independent research and advance in their careers.It is not necessary to have a higher-level degree to be able to join the pharma sector, but to work in research having a Ph.D. is essential, because you have to prove your credentials from a research point of view.
What Skills Do You Need?
Good communication skills are vital in the industry sector. Often in the industry you are working in cross-functional teams so you need to be a good communicator- you need to be able to work well with others. Learning how to prepare effective presentations that deliver the right messages, giving those presentations and adapting to feedback given is essential. Other relevant skills include managing time effectively, meeting deadlines, appraising literature, being creative and solving problems.
Getting Started: Those interested in the sector should seek out summer placements or shadowing opportunities as early as possible. All pharmaceutical companies, big and small, offer some sort of summer job experiences. They are not necessarily for pharmacists- they might go to biochemists or chemists or biologists- but there is summer placements.Unlike for placements in hospitals or the community, there is not one online platform to submit a CV to. Instead, students should apply to each individual company.
Nowadays students could create a template and attach their CV, address it accordingly, and send it to as many companies as they can think of.
Pharmaceutical Scientist Salary:
The salary for this position depends on many factors. For example, the city you are appointed at, the company you are working for, the experience and skill you have gathered and last but not the least, the degree you possess. The average salary of top 12 companies are as given in the figure:
