It is an incredibly satisfying job to be involved in the creation of a new medicine to treat a disease, to save lives, to prevent people getting a disease or to alleviate side effects of other medicines.

The Process

It takes about 10 to 12 years and involves a number of phases to create a new medicine and costs about £550 million. It is not straightforward and many projects fail for one reason or another; it is a high risk business. However, when everything goes well, the outcome for patients in the surgery and clinic is a new medicine which might treat a disease, suppress its symptoms or prevent it taking hold.

Some projects fail because the basic concept does not work out or the research was not able to make a new chemical that had all of the right biological properties. Other projects may fail because unexpected side effects become apparent in later phases of research. It is important to identify potential problems as early as possible in the process because research and development costs rise significantly over the 10 years. About 10-15% of the £550 million project costs will be spent in the first 5 years and then they escalate quickly with the last two years of international clinical research being very expensive.

Qualifications Required

Pharmaceutical employees involved in drug research and development must have at least 2 GCSEs in science and A-levels (or equivalent) in sciences such as biology and/or chemistry. Most scientists have a science-based degree. From the careers matrix you can see that there is a diverse range of science degrees that could allow entry into the pharmaceutical industry. It is a great advantage if you do a degree that gives you the chance to spend some time in the industry. You may also notice that there is scope to move from one sector to another, enabling you to gain experience and skills in a number of areas that interest you. You might even get the opportunity to work abroad.

The subject of their university degree predominantly determines which area scientists initially work in; but there are many exceptions. As they gain experience, scientists quite often take on broader roles. Teamwork is the key to success: chemists work with biologists; molecular biologists with cell biologists; analysts with pharmacists - just think of a combination and it probably happens.