By Philip Kuehl, Pavan Muttil, Alan Watts, Chris Gruenloh
As a graduate student approaching final defense, a post-doc coming to the end of their term, or a young scientist starting their career, individuals consider different information and resources as we ponder our career path options and which one best fit what we consider a successful career. For many of us, looking for a new career opportunity is often driven by what positions are open at the time of a nervous career search. Others strategically evaluate opportunities based on employment sectors within pharmaceutical sciences including: small biotech/pharma, large pharma, contract research organization, or an academic career. One of the best methods to understand the differences in each of these opportunities is to learn from scientists in each of these areas. To fill this gap, the Inhalation and Nasal Community has pulled together Pavan Muttil from the University of New Mexico, Alan Watts from Catalent, and Chris Gruenloh from PPD to provide their insight into their career paths.
These three scientists have looked back at their career paths, answered important questions that are relevant to early career individuals and ‘told their story’ as an opportunity for others to learn from them. The career story of these three scientists will be coming out in a three-part series from the Inhalation and Nasal Community.
This first article provides insight from Chris Gruenloh. As you will learn Chris has worked in several large companies that include large pharma and contract research organizations. In addition, he has served multiple roles within a wide range of scientific communities (INC, IPAC-RS, etc.) and is a regular at the PharmSci360 meetings. If something in his career sparks your interest, look for him at the PPD booth, at the scientific posters, or at the INC meeting at PharmSci360 in 2023.
What factors most influenced your decision(s) along your career path?
I think there are several factors that have influenced my career path. First, I think that my curiosity and willingness to explore new areas of science has really had a positive influence over my career progression. During the early days of my graduate studies at Purdue University’s Department of Chemistry, I fully expected to join an Analytical Chemistry lab since Purdue was ranked #1 for this discipline at the time. I enjoyed working with instrumentation and was fascinated by the mass spectrometric research coming out of the laboratory of Professor R. Graham Cooks. Long story short, and on a whim if I’m being completely honest, I explored and eventually joined Professor Timothy Zwier’s Physical Chemistry laboratory that was focused on using multiresonant spectroscopic methods to investigate hydrogen bonding between size-selected gas-phase clusters containing prototypical aromatic solute molecules and polar, protic solvent molecules. This cross disciplinary research combined my passion for working with instrumentation and analytical chemistry with exploration of physical chemistry. Following graduate school, I knew I wanted to begin a career in industry and was happy to have a few opportunities to select from. The decision to start my career at Glaxo Wellcome (now GlaxoSmithkline) was based more on my experience interviewing and how I was treated during the process than it was based upon the role being offered. These roles in pharmaceutical development, physical properties assessment and the one I chose as an analyst supporting the development of respiratory products were all new to me.
At GSK after expressing a strong interest, my pharmaceutical development team was partnered with a Discovery group and charged with developing a drug delivery solution to the barriers impacting successful delivery of siRNA into the respiratory epithelium. Although, I never envisioned myself working at the interface of biology and chemistry, this experience was quite rewarding even if it didn’t generate a commercial medicine.
The last factor that has positively influenced my career along with curiosity and a cross disciplinary focus, is not being afraid to take chances and fail on occasion. As GSK closed most of the development operations at its Research Triangle Park location, I accepted an opportunity with PPD, a leader in contract analytical testing services for orally inhaled and nasal drug products, to manage their 120 scientist strong Inhalation Team. Coming from large pharma with accountability for a team of approximately 10 scientists, this opportunity allowed me to leverage my hard-earned respiratory development experience with a huge increase in management responsibility. As time progressed in this role, I realized that managing a team of 10 was vastly different than managing a department of 120. I found that the increased administrative requirements of this role left little time for reading and even less time for engagement with the external scientific community. Fortunately, my boss at the time recognized my struggles and we worked together to define a role that would result in a win-win for myself and PPD. Today, my Research Fellow role involves keeping current with emerging science, developing solutions to meet the needs of both PPD and our clients, directing internal research activities and representing PPD externally while interacting across a number of professional networks including AAPS-Inhalation and Nasal Community and IPAC-RS.
What are the aspects of your career that you most enjoy and what are the more routine aspects of your career?
Looking back over my career and the roles I have performed, I think I’ve been most satisfied in roles when I’ve worked within a team-based environment to collaboratively deliver something of value, whether this is knowledge, a project milestone, a clinical study or contributed to the approval of a new medicine. In my current role, I’m most satisfied when I’m able to use my development experience and knowledge of regulations to develop solutions that will meet or exceed the needs of my customers.
One area I’ll mention in regards to routine activities performed over the course of my career is the need to repetitively copy and paste data from one business application to another because the systems are not integrated.
What is something that you wished others knew about your career that most scientists don’t know?
Outside of the respiratory field, I once led the pharmaceutical development efforts to develop a implantable, sustained release formulation for a GLP-1 peptide for treatment of diabetes. My team developed a dosing process that used an insulin pump to continuously deliver exenatide following the transfer of the formulation from Byetta, a commercially available, autoinjector to the pump’s reservoir. The ensuing clinical study successfully demonstrated that Cmax related side-effects could be better managed via continuous infusion and paved the way for further investment in sustained release platforms for an investigational peptide.
What are the measures for success for each of you within the career path that you have selected?
Success in my career comes down to a few things. First for a career path to be successful, you need to have opportunity. This can be provided to you but often the sweetest success comes from those ideas you’re able to develop and see thru to a final solution yourself. In the right circumstances, identifying and pursuing the right opportunity leads to generation of value and a win for me, my organization and my internal or external client(s). The second measure of success in my career path has involved being collaborative. I strive to develop strong working relationships by delivering on commitments. Say what you’re going to do and do what you say!
Looking back on the path that each of you took to get where you are at what is one thing you wished you would have known/considered when you started down this path?
Looking back on my career, I have the benefit of time and experience. Early in my career, I was hungry bordering on anxious and constantly pushing to advance. I think this likely led to a situation where I learned a little about a lot of areas but didn’t have much depth in any one area. Don’t be afraid to concentrate and develop knowledge characteristic of a subject matter expert before exploring new areas.