Pharmaceutics Career Opportunities
Drug delivery is now a billion dollar business with enormous clinical, technical and strategic contributions to modern therapeutics. The current extended time and considerable budget required to bring new drugs to market means that how they are administered to best produce efficacy in patients must become an early, critical part of the drug development process. Most drug candidates are eliminated early in screening processes due to poor solubility and complex formulation issues. Pharmaceutics and drug delivery methods figure prominently in improving a new drug's chances to move through the development pipeline toward clinical use. Pharmaceutical science helps identify optimal methods to deliver a drug and reliably ensure therapeutic benefit with minimal side effects at the physiological site of action or disease. The field requires high level scientific input from scientists trained across several disciplines, including medicine, pharmacology, medicinal chemistry, analytical chemistry, process chemistry, and pharmaceutics. Ph.D. degrees are desirable by industrial employers.
Graduates choosing an industrial position become involved in product development research and apply their scientific background to the solution of practical, challenging problems. Others select positions oriented more toward basic research or at the drug discovery/development interface. Many pharmaceutics researchers in industry choose a scientific career ladder, while others transfer to administrative career tracks. As the nature of industrial pharmaceutical research becomes more sophisticated, those researchers with strong scientific backgrounds compete more effectively for management positions. The increasing number of pharmaceutics trained individuals now entering the upper levels of management will have an increasingly significant impact on the direction of health related research programs in the future. The demand for outstanding researchers in pharmaceutics will, therefore, continue to grow.
Graduates who are interested in providing guidance to future researchers, while directing their own research programs, may opt for careers in academia. Molecular Pharmaceutics programs in academic institutions are expanding and are constantly seeking able teaching and research faculty.
The career future for molecular pharmaceutics is growing!