There is considerable local area demand in Texas as a whole, but particularly in central/south Texas for a trained workforce to fuel our growing biotech/pharma/medical research industry. While students trained in many of the existing PhD and MS programs in biomedical research available across the state will fill some of this need, their expertise is very narrow and focused only on bench research. The program in Drug Discovery will provide not only a rigorous training in the scientific principles behind all aspects of drug discovery, from strategies to select viable targets, to varying approaches to screening for drug candidates, to their validation and further refinement through chemistry, to the business and regulatory aspects unique to organizing a commercial enterprise focused on bringing a drug to market. Students will be ideally trained to contribute to many aspects of the Pharma/Drug Discovery and Development workforce, form bench science to regulatory and business practices.
We have identified a set of relevant Marketable Skills for the MSD3 that students completing the program are expected to gain:
- Knowledge of the drug discovery-development process
- Understanding of regulatory processes
- Basic knowledge of Pharmacological Principles in assessing drugs
- Basic knowledge of Biochemical Principles underlying target discovery and drug design
- Ability to present scientific data orally and written, understandable to the lay public
- Have a broad understanding of the various career tracks within drug discovery.