QDIS Blog

One of the questions I am commonly asked is why I decided on a career in the pharmaceutical industry. My answer really depends on who is asking and what seems to be at the core of why they are asking. My short answer is that I’ve known many people who have had cancer or other serious diseases and I want to feel like I can help alleviate some of the suffering.

My longer answer is that I’ve always had an interest in chemistry from my earliest childhood and can remember with great excitement when I received a chemistry kit one year for Christmas. I found organic chemistry particularly interesting when I was in high school chemistry class. It was then that I decided I wanted to study chemistry in college; I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do exactly, but I wanted to study chemistry. Before my senior year in high school, I had attended a two week summer chemistry course at Indiana State University with a wonderful professor, Dr. Alan Siegel. Since Indiana State offered me a scholarship and I knew a little bit about the department, I decided to go there. It was probably good for me to be at a smaller university for my undergraduate degree. And although not required, I did do undergraduate research with Dr. Richard Kjonaas studying organozinc reagents and their addition to alpha, beta-unsaturated ketones, and received a wonderful education. At the urging of Dr. Kjonaas, I decided to look into going to graduate school and finally after looking at several universities decided to attend Purdue University. Dr. Kjonaas received his PhD from Purdue University working for Dr. Robert Holton and so he was encouraging me to consider Purdue. After getting my degree from Purdue, I decided I did not want to be in academia, and, since biology was not one of my strong suites, I decided to go to work in industry and focus on process development. I had several job offers in various areas such as fuel and oil lubricants and candy and food but I decided helping people and developing new medicines was the better choice.

But back to my short answer, I really do care a lot about helping other people. I’ve had a grandfather die of prostate cancer and several other friends and relatives die from other cancers so any time I run into problems I just pull out their pictures and it reminds me of why I do what I do.

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Recently Michigan State University had a news release describing Kevin Walker’s work investigating 5 enzymes that are may pave the way to producing Taxol ® (paclitaxel) from E. Coli. His group is investigating five enzymes important for the functionalization of the paclitaxel core. Having started my career at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) in the early 90’s I have been exposed to the chemistry and development related to paclitaxel for almost 15 years in the industry and now as a consultant, taxane related work is a key part of my business. While I find the work recently reported in Chemistry and Biology interesting I’m wondering if they aren’t somewhat behind in this area. BMS has been collaborating with Phyton to produce Taxol via plant cell culture since 1993 and this is how BMS currently produces Taxol®. I do think this could potentially be useful for next generation taxane products. While there have been numerous derivatives described in the literature and in patents, with the exception of Taxotere® (doectaxel), none have yet been brought to market.

While I’m hopeful that some of these derivatives may hold hope for the future. Paclitaxel and most derivatives all suffer from poor solubility and problems with formulation. I spent five years at a previous employer working on putting paclitaxel and other drugs on a poly-amino acid polymer which dramatically improved both solubility as well as drug distribution to the tumor tissue. I think the combination of these drugs with appropriate polymer backbones is a promising technology for the future.

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