Spotlight on Biotech/Pharma

Biotechnology beckons

As collaboration between big pharma and biotech increases, so do opportunities for young scientists looking for new adventures.

In academic labs it's knowledge for the sake of knowledge. The main goal in the private sector is to generate a profit. John Ludlow

JOHN LUDLOW was on the tenure track as an associate professor of microbiology at the University of Rochester, New York. He was studying tumor suppressors at the school's cancer center, but he wanted to get closer to formulating products for patients who needed them. So, in 2000 he left to join a startup biotech company Incara Pharmaceuticals of North Carolina, to direct research towards treatments for liver diseases. He has been in the private sector ever since.

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It's a career trajectory that few consider when entering academia, but the shift into industry is becoming more common, especially because the legacy of the recession is a depleted government funding pool for academic labs. With more opportunities available in pharmaceutical and biotech companies than in universities, Ludlow says scientists contemplating the move need to be aware of the differences. “In academic labs it's knowledge for the sake of knowledge,” he says. “The main goal in the private sector is to generate a profit.”

Ludlow appreciates the defined milestones of corporate research and enjoys the challenge of meeting deadlines and complying with regulatory oversight. He says these perimeters provide a direction to research. “I like solving problems and working on projects that have defined endpoints,” he says.

Fading boundaries

Definitions are blurring between the aims of pharmaceutical companies — which typically focus on developing small molecules that can be used as drugs — and those of biotech companies, which work on creating larger biological molecules, such as proteins and antibodies. Pharmas often acquire biotechs, and many researchers are working on merging the technologies, for instance by attaching a small molecule to an antibody to better deliver a drug to its target.

The boundaries between industry and academia are also breaking down. Pharmaceutical companies are collaborating more with universities, often going to academic labs with research solutions they want to pursue, or encouraging professors to send compounds they've developed to be screened for possible development into a new product. Pfizer, for instance, has set up Centers for Therapeutic Innovation in Boston, New York, San Francisco, and San Diego where teams from academia and industry collaborate on research. The BioMed X Innovation Center, in Heidelberg Technology Park, Germany funds teams of young scientists on projects guided by mentors from universities and corporations.

“The classic separation of academic research and applied research — that boundary is disappearing,” says Ulrich Betz, head of the innovation department at Merck Serono, a pharmaceutical company in Darmstadt, Germany. (In the US, the company is called EMD-Serono.) Companies are taking a more active role in academic research. “The old model of industry and academia where you just take the cheque, do what you want and come back in five years, is very rarely applied these days,” he says.

In high demand

For scientists with biology-related backgrounds — including biochemistry, bioengineering, and biostatistics — there are opportunities at major pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and Merck and at smaller biotech companies like ZenBio. Kelly Services, a global job-placement company based in Troy, Michigan, projects that when it comes to the 10 fastest growing science jobs over the next five years, biochemists and biophysicists will tie for third biggest growth areas. Also on the list are medical scientists (excluding epidemiologists) at number six, and biological technicians at number nine. Among the best-funded areas of research are cancer and diseases of the central nervous system, such as Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis.

Another specialty in high demand is biostatistics, helping to design studies and then analyzing the results. “Talk about a job where you can name your price and say where you want to be,” says Jamie Stacey, vice president and science product leader at Kelly Services.

Another area expected to grow is in silico experimentation, designing computer programs that can simulate biological compounds and run virtual tests on them. “This is a skill becoming more important,” Betz says.

He says big pharmaceutical companies like his are hiring fewer people than they used to, preferring to work with other companies and CROs on a project-by-project basis. “There has been some shift toward outsourcing and open collaboration recently,” he says. “That's a clear trend in the entire industry.”

In-house expertise

But, big pharma still hires scientists; the companies need in-house expertise to make decisions about what research to pursue, and to evaluate the results produced by outside contractors. In his own career, Betz earned a PhD in genetics at the University of Cologne, then, in 1998, took a job in a lab at Bayer AG, of Leverkusen, Germany, studying virology and infection prevention. After four years, he became a project leader. These days, he says, it's more common to put someone into a post-doctoral position for a defined period of time, instead of as a permanent hire.

Chris Rivera, president and CEO of the Washington Biotechnology and Biomedical Association, in Seattle, WA, says that while jobs may be harder to come by at larger companies, there is increasing demand among growing small and medium-sized companies that focus on unique technologies. The jobs available, he says, are “quite broad and diverse depending on the stage of the company, the type of company, and what your particular qualifications are.”

There is feedback between industry and academia, not only in the creation of research projects but in the training of scientists. When Graham Jones took over as chair of the chemistry department at Northeastern University Boston, MA, 10 years ago, he approached some of the pharma and biotech companies there to ask what they were looking for in chemistry graduates. Based on their responses, the school revamped its chemistry lab courses to make them more challenging, giving students assignments designed to test problem-solving skills. Northeastern runs on a co-op model, requiring students to do at least one six-month stint working in industry before earning their degree. Most do two co-ops, and some stay longer to do three.

Jones says three quarters of Northeastern's chemistry undergraduates take jobs in industry straight out of school, while the rest pursue PhDs or go to medical school. “The market for BS and MS scientists has always been strong and always will be strong,” he says. “It's actually getting much harder to get a job with a PhD.”

But for scientists who have hit a ceiling in their companies and need a PhD to advance, Northeastern offers a PhD co-op. Participants work with an academic advisor and a company manager to design a joint research project, deciding, for instance, how to publish papers while protecting the company's intellectual property.

Away from the bench

Not everyone with a science degree stays in bench work, of course. Stacey says there's a great demand for scientists to work in labeling and promotion of products, to make sure the science is sound while the requirements of regulatory agencies are met. There are roles for researchers in setting policy about which products to develop and what research to pursue, or to scour journals and scientific meetings to look for potential collaborators. While some people moving to the more business-oriented side of a company go out and get MBAs, that's not strictly necessary. “What I've seen in my career is that on-the-job experience outweighs getting a degree,” Stacey says. For undergraduates thinking about combining science and business, in recent years US universities have started offering a Professional Science Master's degree, a sort of MBA for scientists.

Another role that requires a science background is writing patents. “This job requires a clear understanding of what the technology is. Otherwise scientists can't properly describe it and get the claims right,” says Betz, who has worked with patent attorneys. There, some legal training is also necessary, though the level varies in different countries and might not necessarily mean a law degree.

Jones has even had the occasional chemistry student who wanted a career in science writing. He recently found a co-op job for such a student in the news office of the American Chemical Society. Still other scientists might want to take a discovery they've made and launch their own company. Many schools have entrepreneurship programs that have scientists working with business students to develop business plans. “You don't even have to leave academia if you don't want to,” Rivera says. “If it's a good enough idea, people want to take it and run with it.”

Recruiting in science: a new formula for job satisfaction

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Jamie Stacey embarked on her career in science in the usual way. She studied chemistry, first as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, then at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she graduated with a master's degree in 1995. Soon after, she took a job as a chemist at Abbott Laboratories, in Abbott Park, Illinois, where she studied the relationship between the structure of certain molecules and their biological activities, hoping to find compounds that might be developed into cancer-fighting drugs.

Stacey had been doing that sort of work about five years when someone from Abbott's personnel department asked if she would join the team. They were going to visit college campuses looking for chemists with PhDs for the company to hire. She agreed, and was immediately happy with her new role. “I started doing recruiting and I just loved it,” she recalls.

From there she worked her way up, eventually becoming director of global recruiting for Abbott's locations in more than 150 countries. In February, she moved to Kelly Services, where she is vice president and science product leader, overseeing the company's science-oriented division, Kelly Scientific.

When she was at work in a college laboratory she had no idea this was the direction her career would take. “People shouldn't think of moving into another job as getting out of science,” Stacey says. “I apply my scientific knowledge to helping other scientists find their dream job.”

Stacey studies what journals are publishing and what researchers are pursuing, so she still feels part of the scientific community. Matching research needs with scientists' interests is a way she can use her particular skills to contribute. “This is definitely a passion for me,” she says.

And she admits, “I don't miss the bench work.”