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Increased demand for analytical chemistry services has led to a scale-up of laboratory jobs at pharmaceutical chemical manufacturers like Hovione, where management is concerned about keeping good chemists at the bench.
Rethinking industrial analytical chemistry With demand soaring, drug service and other firms are challenged to keep talented scientists in the lab RICK MULLIN, C&EN NEW YORK CITY
T
he analytical chemistry business is booming. Contract manufacturers have significantly expanded their analytical labs in recent years to keep pace with regulatory requirements and customer demand for data. At dedicated analytical service firms, business is growing as drug companies and customers in other industries seek out backup resources for their inhouse labs and manufacturing plants. That growing demand is creating lots of analytical chemistry jobs. The sometimes-repetitive nature of the work, however, often leads chemists to move on to other fields, such as drug discovery or academic research, creating a serious churn in hiring and on-the-job training. But analytical chemistry is changing with the advent of new measurement and data tools. Quality management efforts, especially in the life sciences, have boosted the importance of analysis as well as the demand for chemists. University chemistry departments and companies that employ analytical chemists are working hard to breathe new life into the discipline. They want students to be better prepared
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to work in industry—and then find it a satisfying career when they get there. Ampac Fine Chemicals recently quadrupled its analytical chemistry capacity, adding 1,200 m2 of laboratory space at a facility near El Dorado Hills, Calif. The contract manufacturer also brought in new technology, including X-ray powder diffraction, particle-size distribution, and dissolution testing capabilities, along with 10 liquid chromatography units. The firm has added 20 analytical chemists with the expansion, according to Chief Executive Officer Aslam Malik, and will likely hire as many more over the next 18 months. The hiring stems from an increased need to analyze the complex chemistry of new
drugs, Malik says, plus a general concern among customers about data integrity. “We are looking more closely at the genotoxic impurities and doing heavy-metal analyses,” he says. Meanwhile, measurement instrumentation has advanced from “prehistoric” methods to cutting-edge technology, raising the skill level required of chemists and the stakes for Ampac in staffing. “It’s always tough to find good chemists, but more so on the analytical side,” Malik says. “The market is tight.” One advantage for Ampac, Malik says, is that the company is a primary employer of pharmaceutical analytical chemists in the Sacramento area. “When people get done in school here, they want to hang around. So we have been lucky. Still, finding very technically qualified people is tough.” Guy Villax, CEO of Hovione, a Portuguese contract manufacturer, is also squeezed in the analytics lab, where he’s seen a huge increase in staffing requirements. “Fifteen years ago, you had one analytical chemist for two organic chemists. Today, at least three per chemist, a sixfold increase.” He attributes the shift to a desire by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration “to have a better understanding of what we are doing.” He agrees with Malik that new technology is changing the field. “The equipment is becoming more sophisticated and more precise,” he says, which has made the field more attractive to chemists. “You know how it is,” Villax says. “If there is a new toy, they immediately use it as much as they can.” The problem, he says, is hiring university graduates who can sustain enthusiasm for the constant testing, even with new
CREDIT: HOVIONE
EMPLOYMENT
machines. “They really get bored and want more for their career,” he says. Villax has begun looking to technical schools in the Lisbon area as ideal for training chemists who will stick with analytics. Working with a local university, Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa, Hovione has invested $1 million to equip a laboratory at one technical school that will also be used by students at three others in the area. It is part of a $5 million, three-year program that will offer courses on analytical chemistry at technical schools and universities. The aim is to train technical experts who will see analytical chemistry as a lifelong career with growth potential. Villax has decided that students at technical schools are the ideal candidates for analytical labs. “We find that these people end up being far better analytical chemists because they love what they do and want to be better and better at it,” he says. “They become like the mechanic who listens to the engine and knows exactly which piston is not right. They have wonderful hands, never mess up the prep for a sample, and can assess when a particular HPLC pump is going to break down.” Likewise, Jeffrey Evans, CEO of the analytical chemistry services company PharmAssist, is considering technical schools as a source of chemists. His firm is also involved with universities, conducting classes at two State University of New York (SUNY) colleges as well as high schools near its labs in South New Berlin, N.Y. PharmAssist recently hosted the chemistry club at SUNY Cortland for a daylong program on analytical chemistry presented by three chemists from the company. Evans and PharmAssist’s chief scientific officer, Richard Hartwick, spent a day lecturing on pharmaceutical manufacturing in a forensic chemistry course at SUNY Oswego. And PharmAssist has become involved with a program run by Cornell University to foster an interest in science among high school students. Meanwhile, academia is trying to enliven the analytical chemistry curriculum and make it more industry-relevant. Jeanne Pemberton, an analytical chemistry professor at the University of Arizona, says chemistry education is traditionally geared toward preparing students for a “diverse array” of careers. Yet industry would like to see more focus. “My understanding from conversations with people in the pharma industry, and this is true not only of the undergrad level but also the Ph.D. level, is that they really are hoping to see a lot more specific industry-focused training,” Pemberton says. “And that is certainly not the American model.”
Pemberton sees some merit to Villax’s “There are hands-on things having to do preference for those with undergraduate with understanding how the instrumentaor two years of training in chemistry over tion electronics work,” she says. And the graduates with advanced degrees for routraining involves industry-specific problem tine jobs such as quality assurance and solving, such as analyzing the calcium and quality control. “Quite honestly, QA and iron content of teeth. “You would be surQC are not all that exciting,” she says. “Not prised at how much students like this.” to Ph.D. chemists.” Regardless of the nature of the educaBachelor-level or even associate’s detion, analytical services companies attest gree courses focused on industry-specific to the need for extra training of new hires. analytical chemistry may be the best way “We recruit with the mind-set that we’ll to build a stable workforce in pharmaceuput six to 12 months of pretty solid trainticals—an industry, Pemberton says, with ing in and develop the scientists here in“certainly lots of repetitive tasks.” Such house before we can turn them loose and training, she adds, will prepare students for expect them to be generally productive,” careers with a high level of job security. PharmAssist’s Evans says. Thomas J. Wenzel, an analytical chemAt SGS, an international testing firm, istry professor at Bates College and chair chemists are typically hired right out of of the ACS Committee on Professional college and undergo six to eight weeks of Training, says the chemistry curriculum has training on testing and regulatory guideswung significantly over the past decade lines, such as FDA’s Good Manufacturing from traditional industrial chemistry to Practice (GMP) quality standard. biochemistry, both at the bachelor’s degree “While college teaches the basics of sciand Ph.D. levels. Along the way, the curricu- ence, students don’t necessarily learn the lum for analytical chemistry as an industrispecific chemistry tests that we conduct al pursuit has been neglected and needs to at SGS, nor do entry-level hires have expebe invigorated, he says. rience in GMP documentation, one of the “We are often disappointed at the extent bedrocks of working in a pharmaceutical to which the first analytical course that stu- testing lab,” says Gayla Velez, the firm’s dents take seems to be so traditional, doing general manager for laboratory services. “It multiple titrations week takes some time to instill after week,” he says. As GMP documentation as an analytical chemist, a default mind-set.” Wenzel wants analytical Nicolas Fortin, presichemistry to be presentdent of Neopharm Labs, ed “as an interesting an analytical services area.” provider, says his firm Wenzel received a also hires college grads National Science Founwhen it is unable to redation grant to run cruit from competitors workshops for faculty and puts them through promoting changes to training similar to the curricula that will orient program at SGS. He analytical testing toward doesn’t view staff reinteresting, industry-fotention as a significant cused problem solving. problem. “Analytical Katarzyna Slowinska, —Guy Villax, CEO, Hovione chemistry is a personal a chemistry professor choice,” he says. “People at California State University, Long Beach at Neopharm Labs want to be on the bench; (CSULB), who is involved in the workthey want to be in the lab.” shops, says the field of analytical chemistry Natasha Demberg, vice president of is changing, primarily because of rapid pharmaceutical solutions at Neopharm technology advances. Labs, takes issue with the notion that an“We need to train them in how to think, alytical chemistry is unrewarding work. not just how to operate,” Slowinska says “There are a lot of people who like to do the of analytical chemists. Rather than being same tests, who find their pleasure in the trained to work with a gas chromatograph, results and productivity of the repetitive for example, she says students need to learn chemistry,” Demberg says. Moreover, it how new tools are applied to problems in isn’t all that repetitive, she says, given the areas such as quality control. evolving technology and the changing chalSlowinska says she has revamped the lenges the drug industry faces. labs at CSULB and signed on an industry Students pursuing advanced degrees in advisory board in an attempt to introduce analytical chemistry brush off the notion more appropriate skills-based training. that they are preparing for tedious jobs. Of
“Fifteen years ago, you had one analytical chemist for two organic chemists. Today, at least three per chemist, a sixfold increase.”
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course, not all are interested in working in the pharmaceutical industry, or even industry laboratories. Kristen Watts, working on her Ph.D. at the University of Arizona, became interested in analytical chemistry as an undergraduate at Furman University and hopes to pursue a career in art conservation science. “Sometimes people look at me cross-eyed when I describe what I’m doing as an analytical chemist,” she says. “I tell them it’s an interdisciplinary meeting of chemistry, physics, and engineering. I’m not making chemicals in a lab, but I am analyzing chemistry.” Adam Meier, a recently minted Ph.D. from the University of Arizona, committed to analytical chemistry when he was ex-
posed to lab work as an undergrad at Bucknell University. He is about to start his new job at ExxonMobil Research & Engineering. Meier says he doesn’t expect to be bored—Ph.D. chemists in analytical labs are doing the least repetitive work. They are the problem solvers confronting new products and technologies. “Every chemical process needs some feedback,” he says. “You need to become familiar with every new process and product and with every new technology.” Evans at PharmAssist is promoting the problem-solving angle in his educational outreach. “I’m trying to recruit kids who can produce knowledge,” he says. “I position our company not so much as a data company. We don’t do run-of-the-mill testing. We produce knowledge from difficult assays—both developing and running them in a quality-control setting.” Hovione’s Villax agrees that challenges requiring advanced skills in chemistry will present themselves. But beyond the problem solving associated with new products and technologies, routine analyses still need to be done. What industry needs to do, he says, is identify scientists who have a commitment to the discipline and are interested in the workings of a pharmaceutical quality-control lab. ◾
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CREDIT: COURTESY OF KRISTEN WATTS
Watts, a Ph.D. candidate in analytical chemistry at the University of Arizona, wants to pursue art conservation science.
