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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Atlanta, GA | Posted: June 16, 2012
John Toon
Research News & Publications Office
(404) 894-6986
Summary Sentence:
The Atlanta pharma community worked together to help doctoral students learn about drug development.
Full Summary:
Doctoral students from four Atlanta universities worked together recently to learn how to develop new pharmaceutical products during a two-week interdisciplinary short course at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Drug Development Short CourseDoctoral students from four Atlanta universities worked together recently to learn how to develop new pharmaceutical products during a two-week interdisciplinary short course at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The course’s final presentations were held June 11.
Two dozen students from Georgia Tech, Mercer University, Georgia State University and Emory University heard lectures from Atlanta-based medical professionals, researchers, and pharmaceutical company leaders – and worked in teams to develop plans for how a drug company might convert a promising molecule into a real product. To demonstrate the interdisciplinary nature of the drug development process, each team included pharmacists, bio-scientists, chemists and engineers.
“Each team was given information from the scientific literature on a drug in early stage development by a pharmaceutical company, and was asked to put together and justify a detailed plan for bringing that molecule forward into a drug product useful in clinical medicine,” said Mark Prausnitz, the course’s leader and a Regents’ professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering.
Speakers from the Atlanta pharmaceutical community talked to the students on such topics as drug discovery and design, drug manufacturing, formulation, pre-clinical studies, design of clinical trials, marketing, project teamwork and R&D reports. In addition to Prausnitz, other instructors included:
Students were pleased with the opportunity to see the entire drug development process and to work closely with peers from other universities. “Working in an interdisciplinary team allowed us to connect the dots between all of the medical, scientific and business aspects of bringing a drug to the market,” said Meera Gujjar, a graduate student in pharmaceutical sciences at Mercer University.
Chris Quinto, a Ph.D. student from Georgia Tech, found students from other backgrounds helpful in sharing their expertise in the complex drug development process.
“The Mercer students in my group were a great resource in helping explain and make sense of the data and terminology in the papers that we read,” Quinto said. “What I found most interesting in this class was how the drug development research teams consist of many different specialties, each of which is vital to the final outcome of the drug development process.”
The course is expected to be offered once every two years. “This shows how Atlanta universities are working together and with local pharmaceutical companies to build a stronger pharmaceutical research and education community here,” Prausnitz added.
