Here are my 10 crucial pieces of advice for students who aspire to a career in pharmaceutical labs:
1. You need a solid foundation in science. Master the basics, and learn how to apply that knowledge.
Biotechnology will have a strong year in 2015, but it can’t get any better than 2014, biotech investor G. Steven Burrill says in his annual year-end report.
“The unprecedented IPO (initial public offering) and M&A (mergers and acquisitions) activity this year will make 2014 one for the record books and unlikely to ever be surpassed,” Burrill said.
Faced with diminishing returns on R&D investments, large pharmaceutical companies are searching for innovative ways to successfully identify, develop, and market products with financial viability. Yet small discovery companies and biotechs continue to outpace large pharma in the approval of NMEs (new molecular entities).
Rampaging animal spirits have given birth to a biotechnology unicorn. It’s apt that a stellar year for initial public offerings in the sector will be capped by its biggest float ever. Juno Therapeutics is a year old and revenue free, but its cancer fighting technology is hot. At nearly a $2 billion valuation, the company shows capitalism’s ability to catalyze investors’ hopes and resources.
Whether a startup makes or breaks depends on if you have the right people on the team. How can you know? During my start-up journey as an early employee of an online education startup, co-founder of a social enterprise, and sole founder of my health technology company, ClickMedix, I’ve been through and witnessed the birth, growth, decline, and eventual end of startups.
Marriott International Inc. is launching a restaurant incubator competition, hoping to tap the world’s growing cadre of food and beverage entrepreneurs to bring a new level of cool to its hotels.
The Bethesda hotel giant bills the competition, called Canvas, as a “global concept lab for food and beverage ideas.” The winners will get up to $50,000 each and six months to operate and prove their concepts.
In a world’s first, a double-amputee, with arms missing at shoulder level, received two prostheses, each of which he is able to control intuitively with his mind and manipulate different joints to control a total of 30 degrees of motion.
The system installed at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory relies on surgically connecting electrodes to existing nerves that used to lead to the different part of the arm and hand.
Researchers at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia have shown for the first time that gold nanorods can effectively stop the growth of cervical cancer cells. The laboratory study of attaching the nanorods to their cell receptors used the famous HeLa cell lines as a cervical cancer model.
The iGrow Hair Growth System from Apira Science (Boca Raton, FL) received the FDA green light for over-the-counter sale for women with Fitzpatrick skin phototypes I to IV and with Ludwig Baldness Scale Classifications of I to II.
The helmet, which includes a pair of headphones for listening to music or podcasts from your tablet or smartphone during at-home treatment, delivers red light to the scalp using lasers and light emitting diodes. The company terms this Low-Level Light Therapy (LLLT) and the system requires use for four to six months to get complete results.
England’s publicly funded healthcare system, the National Health Service (NHS), announced 11 new Genomics Medicine Centres Monday, as part of a new DNA scheme that aims to tackle cancer and rare diseases.