Chapter 1 - Enticements: Why Organic Chemists Work in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Abstract

This chapter discusses as to why organic chemists work in the pharmaceutical industry. Combining elements and compounds, organic chemists in the pharmaceutical industry create drugs that preserve, prolong, and improve lives. Synthetic and medicinal chemists in a pharmaceutical company enjoy an enduring intellectual status. It requires them to identify and make lead compounds and develop them to clinically effective drugs. Such researchers, therefore, grapple urgently with intricate therapeutic problems to wrest practical and novel solutions from their inventions and experiments. In addition, by joining a pharmaceutical company, a person can climb the academic ladder. Moreover, within a pharmaceutical company, midcareer transitions to research administration, drug metabolism, molecular modeling, research management, regulatory affairs, and patent agenting or liaison are feasible. Chemical researchers hunting jobs within this industry enjoy an advantage over their counterparts seeking employment in academia and governments. Drug houses hire more medicinal and synthetic chemists at all degree levels than other employers do. Their growing workforces employ one-fifth to one-quarter of all industrial chemists. These scientists number nearly twice the number of those working for any other group of employers in the chemical industry. Employment in the pharmaceutical industry enhances an organic chemist's knowledge by other means than classes.