More avenues for life science graduates
MANISHA GARG
Life sciences students from different disciplines like biotechnology, microbiology, biochemistry, genetics and as well as pharmaceutical sciences and medicine have a wide range of career paths and special skills to choose from in the present times. Technological development has reached a new zenith where professionals trained in interdisciplinary sciences are more sought after.
Today’s research and development departments in major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, contract research Organisations (CROs) and knowledge process outsourcing companies (KPOs) require personnel in multidisciplinary domains with special skills to understand and handle contemporary technology.
‘In silico’
PhD and post-doctoral fellowship aspirants need to acquire skills in understanding scientific literature like ‘in silico’ (computational biology/chemistry). The future scientist or life science domain expert in any department of a CRO or R&D lab can not afford to be left out from these skills. Literally “in silico” means “performed on computer or via computer simulation.”
‘In silico’ methods in which students can steer career through for better prospects in industry and academia are bioinformatics, drug discovery and medicinal chemistry, molecular modelling, scientific literature and patent analysis, scientific software application development and testing.
Major multinational companies like Accelrys Inc, have partnered with Indian CROs to offer training in their bioinformatics and rational drug discovery software.
Bioinformatics, a relatively new branch of life sciences, is a conglomeration of Informatics and life sciences. The explosion of data from the Human Genome Project has led to the onset of a new era in the field of genetic research. It has influenced bioinformatics and different disciplines like Genomics, Proteomics, Microarrays, High-throughput Screening (HTS) in almost all the leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies that are focussing their efforts to discover new and better drugs using this science.
New drugs
Drug Discovery and Medicinal Chemistry, a specialisation in pharmaceutical sciences that enables a researcher to invent and synthesize new drugs. Although many universities offer medicinal chemistry as discipline in post graduation for pharmacy students, masters students hardly get to touch upon the ‘in silico’ approach to Drug Discovery and Design.
Since Drug Discovery is a multidisciplinary domain, researchers from different disciplines form a R&D team in a Drug discovery projects and ‘in silico’ drug discovery remains the first and most important step in this process in order to narrow down the number of compounds to be synthesized and studied in wet lab and subsequently in clinical research. Every contract research organisation, pharmaceutical and biotech R&D requires establishing a division to monitor patents and mine data from scientific literature.
It is also important for understanding patent issues before companies start their research work in a particular area.
Multinational software companies develop scientific software required to run ‘in silico’ experiments. Although it is more of a computer programming domain, life sciences students are acquiring required programming skills and quality assurance in software development as well. Companies like Accelrys, Schrodinger, Thomson, Tripos, Fujitsu and Cambridgesoft, etc requires people who are strong in software development and quality assurance.
Molecular modelling and use of ‘insilico’ tools has become the basis of research not only in pharmaceutical industry but also other fields like material sciences, chemical engineering, agricultural sciences, veterinary sciences and even complex fields like nanosciences.
Eligibility
Ph.D or post graduation in life sciences, pharmaceutical sciences, medicine, and Chemistry.
Graduates in life sciences also have a chance to direct their career in these specialized areas.
Candidates who added these specialities to their academic degree have been placed well in different pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
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