Boyds recently welcomed fifth year medical student Sam Mayhew to the company for work experience, where he undertook a research project.
In this guest blog, Sam describes his background, his placement at Boyds, and what he gained from the experience.
I am a fifth-year medical student studying at the University of Birmingham. During my time at medical school, I became interested and involved in research and through this, learnt about different types of drugs and their uses, side effect profiles and pharmacology. But the economics of drug manufacture and the process of drug development remained an area not covered by the medical curriculum.
When I met Professor Alan Boyd through a mentoring scheme at the University, I knew very little about drug development. But after a year of his mentorship, I can confidently say that I have a good grasp of the topic and firmly believe it should be incorporated into the medical school curriculum.
I was delighted to then get the opportunity to undertake a week of work experience at Boyds. I worked with the Head of Product Development to investigate whether a target population with an unmet need that could be met by a specific drug existed. I was also involved in investigating the prevalence of these unmet symptomatic needs within the target populations. I investigated a potential side effect associated with the drug in Phase 3 clinical trials by looking at its pathophysiology and its prevalence in the target populations. Finally, I looked at the current treatments available for these needs and any guidelines on their usage.
Conducting these literature and data extraction from the papers helped me to develop my database searching and syntax knowledge, as well as my skills in critical analysis and data extraction.
Overall, my time at Boyds was a fun and enlightening experience and I am grateful to have had the chance to work with a very friendly and qualified team working on incredibly interesting projects. I have learnt more on drugs than I ever thought possible in one week!
Drug development work experience
We are always interested to hear from university students looking to gain experience in drug development. Find out more about working at Boyds here.
