Career Categories: Education & Research

Drug Developer

Drug developers are responsible for bringing new drugs to market. They test thousands of chemical compounds on a "target". A few hundred may show promise and are tested on animals. Very few of those might make it to clinical trials on humans and, if successful, brought to market. Pharmacogenetics is an interesting branch of drug development which researches the slight differences in DNA of individuals that cause varying reactions to different medications. The goal is to move toward a "personalized medicine" model where drugs are chosen based on an individual's genetic makeup.