Career opportunities in this field – Types of positions or designations
1.Principal Investigator : Key Responsibilities include providing a comprehensive and impactful CADD support to drug discovery programs, demonstrating an understanding of full spectrum of project SAR (DMPK, structural and computational , in vitro biology), working in close collaboration with medicinal chemists and presenting plans, progress and results at CADD, chemistry and project team meetings.
2. Drug design research scientist: This position desires to collaborate with interdisciplinary project teams to drive effective decision-making from target identification through candidate nomination by mining and developing predictive models using high-content and time-resolved screening data, including imaging and to keep oneself abreast of scientific literature and interact with internal and external scientists to integrate biological insights into lead characterization and screening efforts.
3. Computer-Aided Drug Discovery or Computational Chemist : Summary of duties include deep understanding of target biology, leading medicinal chemistry design efforts through knowledge of SAR, and application of predictive methods for physical properties, PK/PD, on- and off-target activity and synthetic feasibility.
4. Molecular Modeler : Responsibilities include conducting support and development activities in areas such as computer aided drug-discovery, drug design, homology modeling, molecular dynamics, statistical analysis and related methods and procedures using open source solutions to support current and future needs in areas relevant to diseases such as cancer and HIV research and clinical studies.
5. CADD investigator : Candidates are expected to perform duties such as driving hypothesis generation to result in higher clinical success rates for programs utilizing small molecules peptides, RNAs, protein degradation, transient covalent inhibitors, molecular glues and kinetic stabilization of drug-target complexes.
6. Drug design Engineers: Job description includes detailing, design engineering, process modelling, device integration, simulation software etc and leading cross-disciplinary mechanistic studies using physics-based modeling and simulation, cellular confirmation and biophysical characterization.
7. Computational Biophysicists : Relevant areas of job duties might include investigation of conformational changes relevant to the function of protein kinases, structural modelling of protein-protein complexes involved in signal transduction or other cellular processes, direct application of molecular dynamics or other computational methods to drug discovery, ion channels, or other biomolecules, or study of fundamental biophysical problems, such as protein and RNA folding.
8. Bioinformaticist in the health sector : Job description primarily includes developing analysis plans unitedly with members of the research team, conducting analyses in a timely fashion, deciphering results for the team as well as writing analytical strategies for peer-reviewed publications
9. Business Development Executive : Not only orthodox jobs but one also gets a chance to handle businesses in this field. Most of the Pharma companies look for candidates with 2 – 6 yrs experience, who can identify business opportunities from the local and domestic market to expand their pipeline. Marketing skills are also desired so as to pursue annual sales in order to achieve quarterly and annual targets/budgeted revenues.
10. Research Technician : The personnel is expected to handle standardized molecular biological, microbiological or biochemical tests and laboratory analyses for drug discovery process, and is also responsible for designing and executing advanced experiments and setting strategy, along with developing, modifying and improving standard operating procedures.
11. Lectureship/Professorship: Job description includes teaching assigned courses to undergraduates and graduates, Phd programmes acting as a counsellor, mentor, trainer and educator. Other desirable skills are standard hands-on experience related to molecular modelling and drug designing techniques.
Some of the global pharmaceutical, healthcare and food giants working in this field are Aurobindo Pharma, Glenmark Generics, Cipla , Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Foster Corporation, Abbott, SeQuent, Medtronic, Wockhardt, Pfizer, IPCA Laboratories, Calyx, Mother Dairy, Bliss GVS Pharma, Al Rawabi, Almarai, Green Pastures, PepsiCo India, Allergy Therapeutics, CFTRI, Ciron, Sun Pharmaceutical, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Ranbaxy , Biocon Mankind, Beryl Drugs etc