Day Jobs

[Alpha]

Medicinal chemist.

Are you doing rational development/synthesis or high-throughput screening on microarrays?

 

[hankejp]

I am a Unified Messaging Administrator. I am in charge of all our email, staff, faculty, and students. I am also in charge of all of our phone systems and voicemail, Instant messaging, web conferencing, overhead paging system, etc, etc. Keeps me busy.

 

[sarallyn]

student

 

[Mullen]

College student 3 days a week, the other days I usually have something to do around the farm.

 

[firemedic0135]

Was a firefighter/paramedic for 11 years and just recently resigned and now I am an old ass college student and slinging sweet BBQ 6 days a week to pay for new lenses lol

 

[skates94]

My Avatar Says It All.....

 

[abraxas]

My Avatar Says It All.....

You're a headlamp?

 

[skates94]

You're a headlamp?

LOL..... I hope your just kidding but just in case I'm a Police Officer (hence the pig).

 

[Steph]

Are you doing rational development/synthesis or high-throughput screening on microarrays?

Rational design. I think fewer and fewer companies rely on high-throughput screening of libraries of 1000's of compounds for their research programs (in hit to lead and lead optimisation stages). We use high-throughput screening of smaller numbers of selected compounds for new targets to try and identify hits but after that it is all based on rational design.

 

[Alpha]

Rational design. I think fewer and fewer companies rely on high-throughput screening of libraries of 1000's of compounds for their research programs (in hit to lead and lead optimisation stages). We use high-throughput screening of smaller numbers of selected compounds for new targets to try and identify hits but after that it is all based on rational design.

You don't by chance work for GSK do you? Someone from the metabolic drug dept came to talk at my university....said they kind of work backwards. Well, forwards then backwards then forwards again. They would ID functional groups for binding but then screen a library for a backbone that would fit, then engineer the synthesis to figure out how to get those groups onto the backbone, then tweak for higher binding affinity...

 

[Steph]

You don't by chance work for GSK do you? Someone from the metabolic drug dept came to talk at my university....said they kind of work backwards. Well, forwards then backwards then forwards again. They would ID functional groups for binding but then screen a library for a backbone that would fit, then engineer the synthesis to figure out how to get those groups onto the backbone, then tweak for higher binding affinity...

No, I work for a much small pharmaceutical company. GSK is a good example of the change of use of HTS. They used to make 1000's molecules with small functional group variations around one scaffold and screened all the molecules to find the best. HTS is now part of the rational design and fewer molecules are made and screened.

 

[Alpha]

How have health and environmental concerns over reagents altered your syntheses? An ex-professor at my school who now works in industry said they have 40,000L of benzene lying around that they can't use.

Do reagents matter a lot in terms of scalable process development (cost and time-wise)? That is, when you're designing a synthesis that requires, say, a carbonyl-->alkene elimination, E/Z aside, how do you decide between, say, a wittig and a peterson?

 

[Steph]

How have health and environmental concerns over reagents altered your syntheses? An ex-professor at my school who now works in industry said they have 40,000L of benzene lying around that they can't use.

I am not old enough to have seen drastic changes in the chemical industry. In research we try to minimize the use of toxic chemicals. If there is no alternative, we will use those toxic chemicals. In research, the amounts used are fairly small and with appropriate safety measures the risk of exposure is minimal.

Do reagents matter a lot in terms of scalable process development (cost and time-wise)? That is, when you're designing a synthesis that requires, say, a carbonyl-->alkene elimination, E/Z aside, how do you decide between, say, a wittig and a peterson?

In development, the synthesis design is mainly driven by cost. The cost will ditctate what reagents and reactions are used. A lot of factors can have an influence on cost. For example:

- Cost of reagents
- Energy (to stir, heat or cool down the reaction mixture)
- Ease of purification (purification of kg's of compound can be very expensive)
- Environmental considerations (eg disposal of toxic waste)
- The use of toxic reagents can be very expensive (eg use of special equipment, waste disposal, implementation of safety procedures...)

All those costs have be taken into account to design the cheapest synthesis. On top of that the process has to be reliable and easily reproducible.

 

[johngpt]

Well, I actually have a ...
...
... to continue doing research while I'm in med school, without doing an entire PhD.

Pretty cool, I had to ask, 'cause it sounded something like my little brother said he was doing when I walked into the bathroom and caught him masterbating- He was vectoring genes all over the place.

So when you said,

... I build viral vectors for gene therapy.

I just thought it was something you did before you took a nap.

Oh man, snot flew out my nose I laughed so hard when I read this!

Damn, gotta clean the monitor now...

...probably recalibrate too.

 

[Joves]

[/quote]I was a construction inspector for 20 years, but have recently taken a position as a quality control manager for a concrete company.[/QUOTE]

Well atleast there is one other person in the concrete industry here. I operate a 32 Meter concretepump in N.Az. I love my job it is like palying a video game with real people. Also I travel all over N.Az going to places that people go on vacation to see, best thing is I get paid for it. I love my job!