The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7469 p303
15 September 2007

This article
Reprint   Photocopy

PDF 60K, Acrobat Reader

British Pharmaceutical Conference 2007

Science jobs seen as low-paid and dull

One of the reasons for the dearth of scientists with skills needed by the UK pharmaceutical industry — in particular the lack of people with in vivo skills — was that science careers were perceived as low-paid and unexciting, Nigel Brown, director of science and technology at the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, said in the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences keynote lecture.

Other reasons for the lack of these skills, which had been identified in a report due to be published by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry and the Biosciences Federation next month, included societal concern about animal research and a decline in the teaching of practical skills at school and at universities.

“The training that is received is not actually [what the] industry finds useful.”

There were some remedies, he said. For example, imaginative schemes had brought together research councils to fund four centres for integrated mammalian biology focused around in vivo research and training. “We are in a positive position but there is still some way to go to ensure we have the next generation of researchers.”

Professor Brown described the UK science base and its importance for pharmaceutical research. The research and post-graduate teaching capacity of universities, research councils, charities, institutes and laboratories supported highly trained people and were involved in knowledge transfer and commercialisation activity. However, the science base needed continual development to remain at the cutting edge, he said.

Research councils had a dual role, set out in two public sector agreement targets. The first was to make the UK the best place in the world to do research. “We do this by funding blue-skies research, high quality, internationally competitive research,” he said. The second was to reap the economic benefit of this research through the funding of knowledge transfer and innovation.

He described the different funding streams available and training schemes that were used to support pharmaceutical research, but warned that it was unlikely that there would be any significant increase in funding over the next three years.

BPC-PJ careers forum

Discussion at the BPC-PJ careers forum covered a wide range of topics, from the opportunities for pharmacists in the pharmaceutical industry to the need for pharmacists to develop their confidence.

The difficulties faced when moving from one sector to another were also raised, although as more clinical roles developed transfer may become easier.

Olivia Timbs, editor of The Pharmaceutical Journal chaired the forum. She was joined on the panel by John Gentle, community pharmacist in Shropshire, Ray Fitzpatrick, chief pharmacist at Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust, and Theo Raynor, BPC 2007 Practice Chairman.

They are pictured, left to right, with Miss Timbs.

APS commends science posters

Six researchers had their work commended by the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Each researcher was presented with a cheque for £100 and a certificate at a drinks reception at BPC, sponsored by APS. The winners were:

• Joan Taylor, De Montford University, Leicester, for her poster “Closed loop glucose control of diabetic rats”

• Jonathan Sutch, from AstraZeneca, for his poster “A novel method to evaluate powder flow properties using small sample quantities”

• Samuel Pygall, from the University of Nottingham, for his poster “Confocal laser scanning microscopy as a methodology to explore the effects of a model drug series on hydroxypropyl methylcellulose hydro-philic matrices”

• Louise Ho, from the School of Pharmacy, University of Otago, New Zealand, for her poster “Analysis of tablet film coating quality using terahertz pulsed imaging”

• Yousef Javadzadeh, from Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran, for his poster “Effect of pH of the crystallisation medium on the physicomechanical properties of carbamazepine crystals”

• Gerard Byrne, from the University of Nottingham, for his poster “Label free total internal reflection microscopy for imaging of nanoparticle endocytosis by live cells”

Science Chairman ’08

Andrew Lloyd, professor of biomedical materials at the University of Brighton, was introduced as Science Chairman for BPC 2008