Job$ in the Drug Indu$try. A Career Guide for Chemists

370 Pages·2000·6.834 MB·English

by  Richard Friary (Auth.)

DISCLAIMER
This book expresses its author's opinions and observations, not the views or
policies of any company, except perhaps by coincidence. None of the
writer's employers—past, present, or future—sponsored the work, nor did
any of them endorse it.
The author has done his best to ensure the accuracy of the information
presented in this book as of the publication date, drawing on sources be
lieved reliable. However, the publisher and author take no responsibility for
the validity or timeliness of all materials herein, and none for the conse
quences of using this information. Neither the publisher nor the author ex
plicitly or implicitly promises that readers will find employment because of
anything written or implied here.
This book is not intended, nor should you consider it, as legal advice ap
plicable to your specific situation. Laws are frequently updated and are
often subject to differing interpretations. You are solely responsible for your
use of this book. The publisher and the author will not be responsible to you
or anyone else because of any information contained in or left out of this
book.
XI
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Few obligations are as pleasant to meet as my duty to thank the many
people who so graciously contributed to this book. They include Captain
Kevin Pitzer, Ph.D., who described the medicinal chemistry practiced at
the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. From the National Institutes of
Health, Richard Drury and Dr. Kenneth Kirk acquainted me with chemi
cal research in their organizations. Respectively, Frank E. Walworth and
Dr Mary Jordan from the American Chemical Society kindly reviewed
passages and generously contributed salary data from surveys. Novelist
Barry A. Nazarian offered gentle criticism. So did Dr. Thomas C. Nugent
of Catalytica, Inc., who read the whole manuscript and drew the distinction
between process research and process development that appears here over
his name.
Too many to be named yet too generous to be neglected, scores of per
sonnel officers from as many companies responded to my questionnaire con
cerning summer jobs and internships for chemistry students. Two patent
attorneys, Drs. Thomas Hoffman (Schering-Plough) and Konstantinos
Petrakis, who are also organic chemists, troubled to read and correct Chap
ter 4. From a variety of pharmaceutical companies, other chemists improved
chapters through their suggestions. These chemists include Mathew Reese
(Pfizer), Dr Joseph Auerbach (Merck & Co.); Drs. David Provencal and
Wayne Vaccaro (Bristol-Myers Squibb) ;Z)r: William Metz (Hoechst Marion
Roussel); Drs. Daniel Solomon, Martin Steinman, and Cheryl Alaimo
(Schering-Plough); and Drs. Nick Carruthers (Johnson and Johnson) and
Philip Decapite. I thank them all.
My indebtedness also extends to Drs. Peter Mauser (Hoechst Marion
Roussel) diXvA Robert W. Watkins (Schering-Plough), respectively a physiol
ogist and a pharmacologist, who assisted with Chapter 2. I am grateful to
XV
xvl Acknowledgments
Linda Klinger, Dr. David Packer, Kim Schettig, and Mark Sherry, all of
Academic Press, for their efforts and encouragement in bringing this book to
press.
Without the generosity of all these contributors, my endeavor would not
have gone so far nor traveled so fast. Much of the credit for the published
work therefore belongs to them.
FOREWORD
Friary's book is a much-needed treatise for those chemists, or for that mat
ter any scientist, about to enter or contemplating entry into the pharmaceu
tical industry. Experience has shown that academe does not prepare us for
the culture shock of moving into the multifarious environment of the phar
maceutical industry.
Drug discovery and development are a mix of disciplines and functions
that excite and confuse the uninitiated, yet provide unparalleled opportu
nity for scientists who can master the tools at their disposal. At the begin
ning of a career in the industry, much of one's time is spent learning to chart
a course through this complex milieu. And for those of us managing these
organizations, our principal concern is to jump start our "tyros" so that they
achieve the optimal blend of effectiveness and efficiency with the altruism
that defines the motivation of pharmaceutical scientists. Friary's book pro
vides the navigational instruments for the uninitiated. He defines the appeal
and the expectations of the chemist's job and proceeds to an informed
analysis of the discovery and development processes in enough detail to
warrant scrutiny by medicinal and process chemists who are in position, but
still learning their trade.
Friary's book is especially timely because chemistry is undergoing a ren
aissance during an age of industrialization of the scientific process. The in
dustry has been enamored of the disciplines of molecular biology and
genomics through the late 1980s and continuing into the 1990s. The fruits of
those labors, i.e., new drug targets, and the consequence, i.e., screening of
synthetic compound libraries, have provided more leads for chemical modi
fication to create drugs than ever before. High-throughput biology has gen
erated an unprecedented need for chemists, because they are the only
scientists who can reduce this explosion of medical knowledge to practice.
Job$ in the Drug Industry removes the mysticism surrounding the
pharmaceutical chemist's position. The book reveals how the flexibility of
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xvHi Foreword
chemists trained in first principles of the physical world and the scientific
process allows them to flourish in the pharmaceutical environment to be
come multifaceted drug hunters. Friary's book will be an important tool in
the chemist's armamentarium, teaching chemists not only how to find the
appropriate job, but also how their creations move to the status of an ap
proved drug for preventing and controlling human disease.
William H. Rosier
Senior Vice-President, Drug Discovery
Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute
PREFACE
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it.
—George Santayana
Plus ga change, plus c'est la meme chose.—^French proverb
Origins
This book originated in the summer of 1963, when I worked as a factotum in
a textile mill. Having failed to find a temporary job doing chenaical research,
I strove to learn from an unsuccessful search for this preferred employment,
hoping never to repeat mistakes. Dispatched early in the spring, my applica
tions arrived too late and addressed too few research-based companies.
That these failings sprang from unfamiliarity grew apparent later and pro
voked a resolution. If ever I could, 1 would help students find work, were
they as much in need of assistance as I had been.
For more than 30 years I did not comnut a word of this book to paper. In
the meantime, that resolution sprang repeatedly to nund, usually in re
sponse to either of two spurs.
(1) As I published research, I often received job applications—and usu
ally redirected them. Some job hunters, I learned, unwittingly apply to in
dustrial researchers who have no positions to offer and little knowledge of
any in the offing. So, resumes pop up in the laboratory as unexpectedly as
burnt toast in the kitchen, where they can be as welcome as charcoal for
breakfast. Such applications are better sent to directors familiar with open
ings and perhaps empowered to create or fill them. However, new graduates
and even postdoctoral researchers frequently lack any network of helpful
acquaintances, while anyone's efforts to create a network can go awry.
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XX Preface
(2) On several occasions, I answered inquiries from students interested
in summer or permanent jobs doing research in pharmaceutical firms. Some
of my colleagues and I once participated in an informal series of informational
interviews arranged by an undergraduate studying an applied science. Not a
chemistry major, he wanted to work as an organic chemist in a large pharma
ceutical company and wondered whether as a prerequisite he should earn a
graduate degree in biochemistry or medicinal chemistry. Learn organic syn
thesis, we told him, giving him the names of chemists who teach our art in
graduate schools. These students and job hunters, although they expressed
interest in pharmaceutical industry careers, proved unacquainted with the
hiring schedules, sizes, kinds, whereabouts, and doings of research-based
drug companies, much as I had been. In the words of the proverb that opens
this preface, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.
Long-standing observations, as well as recent ones, suggested that
newly graduated job seekers would benefit from guidance in finding em
ployment. They also indicated that a need for a guidebook still exists, for
none was in or out of print. Finally, a decision to write gained reinforcement
from the Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy representing
the National Academy of Sciences. In its 1995 report "Reshaping the Gradu
ate Education of Scientists and Engineers," the Committee wanted students
routinely to receive better information for making career choices than they
now obtain.
Readership
The intended readership for this career guide comprises three groups of
chemists, two kinds of student advisers, and a sixth, less easily classified
group of people. Included in the first three groups are undergraduate stu
dents of chemistry; graduate students of organic, medicinal, or bioorganic
chemistry; and postdoctoral chemical researchers whose dissertations con
cern the preceding three specialties. Chemists from these three groups are
beginning or continuing their working lives, choosing between the pharma
ceutical and other chemical industries or among industrial, governmental, or
teaching careers.
Student advisers include university career development officers and
professors of chemistry. The latter advisers are those who direct students'
undergraduate or graduate chemical research or generally counsel under
graduate chemistry students.
The sixth group of readers includes personnel managers not trained as
scientists but employed by the pharmaceutical or other research-based
chemical industries. Examples are the agricultural, food, perfumery, animal
Preface xxl
health, and personal care industries, where it is also essential to understand
and exploit molecular structure-function relations. Responsible for describ
ing chemists' jobs and interviewing applicants, these recruiters take an in
terest in their work and qualifications. Other members of this diversified
group are detailers, recruiters, physicians, biologists, biochemists, pharma
cists, and physical, analytical, pharmaceutical, or manufacturing chemists.
All these people can learn here what medicine discovery and development
entail, what roles organic chemists play in these endeavors, and which com
panies make up the drug industry.
Scope, Purpose, and Means
Defining the book called for three restrictions. First, it would exclusively
treat jobs in the North American pharmaceutical industry. This complex in
dustry comprises not only fully integrated, long-established, and large drug
houses, but also many other kinds of corporate and institutional employers.
These features and the following two considerations were to lend adequate
scope.
Second, the book would appeal primarily to the aforementioned three
groups of chemists. Although the guide serves a broad readership of people
employed in drug houses, its locus directed me to write about what I already
professed to know or reasonably hoped to learn.
Finally, the book would deal with recent graduates' task of finding their
first full-time jobs as chemists. It therefore says nothing about developing or
changing a career or about retiring fi:om one. Industry-experienced chemists
need a guidebook less than newly graduated scientists, and career-change
and -development books already exist.
Job$ solves the problem facing certain newly graduated chemists: how
to find suitable jobs as researchers in the drug industry. This problem has
topical as well as lasting aspects. That jobs are less visible because of the
outsourcing that large companies practice is a topical difficulty. So are merg
ers, which bring cost savings at the expense of jobs. A timeless obstacle to
securing employment speedily is lack of adequate familiarity with the many
aspects of job hunting.
To accomplish its purpose, this book gathers in a single volume the fun
damentals of getting a job as a medicinal or process chemist in the pharma
ceutical industry. The only guidebook to do so, Job$ shows why chemists
join the industry and how drug discovery and development lead to chemists'
jobs. It describes the kinds of work that chemists do and the goals their
labors serve, and notes the satisfactions, salaries, pensions, and other bene
fits they can expect. It explains how to find and evaluate jobs and, in an
xxH Preface
appendix, shows where in Canada and the United States to look for them. A
second appendix furnishes the locations, names, and contact information for
more than 500 companies and other organizations that, among others, com
pose the North American pharmaceutical industry. Presented in an afford
able and available format, this information will help prospective employees
decide to join the drug industry.
Richard Friary
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Friary, Ph.D., is a synthetic organic and me
dicinal chemist employed by the Schering-Plough
Research Institute. This institute forms the dis
covery and development arm of a fully integrated
multinational pharmaceutical company. The author's
combined experience in this company and CIBA-
^ ^ ^f V Geigy (now part of Novartis) spans nearly 30 years.
^ ^^ M As a senior principal scientist, the writer is an
^^ iflH accomplished chemical researcher who discovered
J HB a safe and effective drug that relieves psoriasis and
j i HH dermatitis. He was instrumental in steering the ex-
^ H ^H perimental medicine to clinical trials in human be
ings and in developing it afterward. Dr. Friary is
among the few chemists ever to have made a drug that entered clinical stud
ies in human beings, and among fewer still whose drug passed clinical trials.
Eighteen patents and 31 articles name him as an inventor and an author.
Born in 1942, Richard Friary is a native of Biddeford, Maine, and a grad
uate of Colby (B.A., 1964) and Dartmouth Colleges (M.A., 1966) and of
Fordham University (Ph.D., 1970). He is a veteran of the R. B. Woodward
Research Institute in Basel, Switzerland, where he worked as a postdoctoral
researcher from 1970 to 1973. There he learned medicinal chemistry by
making cephalosporin C analogs as antibacterial agents, and organic synthe
sis through a total synthesis of prostaglandin Fg^^. Only a few chemists ever
wrote as many as two articles with the finest organic chemist of all time, the
late R. B. Woodward, and Friary is one of them.
He married the former Diane McKee of Berlin, New Hampshire, in 1968.
Weather permitting, Friary sails on ice skates; a trade book he wrote on this
winter sport was published recently. His other hobbies include listening to
traditional jazz, splitting firewood, reading a newspaper while walking a dog,
and writing about himself in the third person.
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