Bio-pharmaceutical industry is now in its infancy. We are in urgent need of a great number of researchers with professional knowledge and technical skills in diseases to join the industry and engage in new drug development.
Recently, a new anti-cholesterol medication is allowed to go public, adding a new member to the long list of biological drugs. These super biological drugs not only create amazing profits to pharmaceutical companies, but also create a lot of jobs and opportunities to young researchers who are interested in drug development. However, if these young talents want to get into this industry, the first thing they should do is to temper themselves so as to acquire knowledge and skills necessary for the biopharmaceutical industry. Biopharmaceuticals is a very complex medicine. It is usually produced with organism or extracted from organism, such as fungal cells like E. coli or yeast, proteins expressed by macromolecules or in living cells and other products.
A report submitted by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America in 2013 showed that there are 907 kinds of biological drugs in research stage (Medicines in Development: Biologics PhRMA; 2013) in the United States only. Pharmaceutical companies around the world are also working hard to develop their own biopharmaceutical business.
Enter Biopharmaceutical Industry
In order to enter the biopharmaceutical industry, young scientists have to acquire relevant knowledge, such as neurobiology, cardiovascular disease and immunology. Meanwhile, they also need to have a basic understanding of antibody engineering, bioinformatics, antibody sequencing, genetic manipulation and many other related subjects. Monica Müller, chief scientific officer of Creative Biolabs, said that these young people should also need to have the ability of problems solving, creativity, leadership and teamwork skills.
Although there are many opportunities, competition is fierce in this field. “We recently released a batch of job posting, and received more than 50 resumes for each position in the first week”, said professor Monica. According to Charles, CD Genomics received 100 and 150 resumes for the position of primary and secondary researcher.
So how can these young researchers stand out from a number of candidates? Let’s continue in the next post.