[kriggy]

Hi there guys

As part of mine studies, Ive been given a chance to go for 3 week internship in Teva Pharmeceuticals so I decided to share my experiences and thoughts. Im sure that I might not be the most qualified person on this forum to write about differences between academia and industry but maybe one day, someone will read this when deciding wheather go for internship or not (aand maybe not).

Before I start, I have to confess: before I started this intership few days ago, I thought of chemical industry as something I realy dont want to go into. As I realized on my 1st day here, my view was totaly flawed lol.

My position is in organic synthesis research lab.
I started on monday: The first thing I went through (and probably anyone whos going for internship in industry will have to pass it too) was safety training. Most of the stuff way fairly obvious except maybe static electricity, Ive never thought of it but it looks like very serious place where something can go wrong, so lots of precautions there.

When I got into my lab we got brief instruction talk about what we gonna do etc.. Well, our (one of my friends is there too) lab coats were not suffiecient - yea, few holes in back...- same goes for shoes and neither of us had lab trousers. At least my googles were OK

And what we are doing here? Be sure we are not washing glassware (as some of mine friends were joking about it).
My classmate is doing synthesis optimalization, and its very cool: There are 5 possible things to optimize: amount of reagent B (eq. compared to reagent A), base, solvent, temperature.
The cool thing is, that by doing this conventionaly, you would need to do a lots of experiments but he did only 9: at 3 different temperatures (high/medium/low) he did 3 experiments each with high/medium/low amounts of reagents.
By using different combinations of those conditions and analyzing the %conversion he gets some numbers and those are sent to Izrael where they will be statisticaly analyzed to get the best conditions for this reaction.
The statistical analyzis helps in the way, that in lab at Uni I woud do this at 3 temperatures and then chose one of those but by using computer calculation, the result might be that the optimal temperature could be somewhere inbetween.

Note that when I work on my thesis I want to get the best yield obv, but as I was told, in industry they dont care that much about yield like they care about amounts of side products and their identificaiton. Another thing is that when Im trying new reaction, its usualy done on 1mmol scale while he is doing it on larger scale - about 2-3 grams of starting material.

And what am I doing?
Detertmining adsoption isotherm for cyclosporine on SiO2 column. Doing lots of preparative HPLC measurments (and getting weird results so far lol). The weirdest thing was that I didnt know anything about HPLC: software is very different from the one we have at Uni, troubleshooting? no idea, instrument preparation for analysis? no idea. I had OK understanding of how the instrument works, what are the intrumental parts but never done something like this. I like when they throw you into water when you cant swim I was bit sad what I was told that I will be doing this and not synthesis (maybe I will later) but its realy interesting.

Im not sure If I have a point, maybe something like if you can get an internship go for it. Its worth it.
Haha its probably over for today. Hope you enjoyed at least a little and maybe in few days I´ll write something again.
And of course, I cant wait for your thoughts or comments. who has both industry and academia research experience?

[curiouscat]

Good review! Loved reading it.

On my first week of internship apart from the lab safety training they made us do training on sexual harassment policies, intellectual property, & firefighting. Some of it was a bit boring. Some parts were interesting : e.g. getting key results in your lab notebook signed & witnessed by others. The crucial lab notebook as evidence in courts.

The big frustration in industrial labs is having your project suddenly stopped when you were doing just great for reasons that have nothing at all to do with the success of the technology.  Another uggh was not being able to order stuff directly but go through purchase, procurement etc. And tons of paperwork.

Another mildly frustrating part is dealing with MBA's.

[kriggy]

GLad you like it
Well, we didnt have any sexual harassment training, but I suppose its because here when you hold the doors and smile its not considered sexual harassment. And most women I encountered in lab so far could be my grandmothers so...

Anyway initialy I didnt want to write today but crazy things happened:
1) alcohol and drug test at gatehouse: people are randomly selected by computer to be tested so why not randomly test an intern whostarted 3 days ago
2) data analysis: We had about 12 samples running overnight and they gave us the data needed to finish the isotherm. But it didnt worked out as expected:
-when you measure the same sample twice (from same vial) and it gives you very different results something is wrong.
-when you measure sample where you are 100% sure its 100g/L and integration and calculation using calibration curve tells you its only 51g/L something is even worse (I found out during the brainstorming part  of the day)
-and the most funny part of today: 2 hrs brainstorming with my supervisors how exacly are compounds adsorbed in columns.
maybe you could help me:

Imagine an hplc column which is equilibrated with 10g/L solution. The amount of compound in column is equal to adsorbed compound on stationary phase and amound of compound which is in the void area between stationary phase. Then you elute the column and measure amount of compound in column.
Then you take the same column and equilibrate it with 20g/L solution. Then there is double the amount of compound in the column etc..
The question is, whether the amount of compound in column (adsorbed and in the void) can be increased indefinitely just by increasing the concentration of compound in the solution you equilibrate the column with (the maximum is given by the solubility of the compound in the mobile phase). Obviously the stationary phase can adsorb only limited amount of compound but the void area?
My supervisor was demontrating this by flowing water (ie the compound)through common sponge (ie column): low flow in means low flow out and the sponge is wet. High flow in means high flow out but the sponge cant be more wet.
Thoughts?

Honestly Ive never seen something like this before in academia (well im only student so I havent seen many things) but we spent good two hours discussing the problem why it doesnt work. Was it experiment desing? Was it maths? Did I screw up the sample prep (well nobody said that but I feel its the most probable answer  )?
When reaction didnt work for me in a lab, we usualy tried it using different method instead of brainstorming why it doesnt work - at least initialy. At this point I found out something is wrong with the calibration

To be honest even thought It didnt work today was realy cool. The best thing IMO was that my supervisor was able to say that he didnt know something. Ive met lot of ppl who just werent able to say that.

cheers

[curiouscat]

And most women I encountered in lab so far could be my grandmothers so...

...and are you sure that that statement in itself does not construe some form of improper conduct? 

alcohol and drug test at gatehouse: people are randomly selected by computer to be tested so why not randomly test an intern whostarted 3 days ago

That's interesting. Where I worked only plant operators, heavy equipment drivers & such very critical positions got randomly tested. For R&D, chemists etc. it was only conducted prior to employment & then only on a complaint, or if an incident happened etc.


Re HPLC: I've not much clue. But my naive intuition says sure, you can increase the void space conc. to infinity. It is identical to what you fed in. I think.

[kriggy]

Yeah someone could interpret it that way. I mean no disrespect or something.. Seriosly, the lab vouldnt work without them.

Thanks  for thought about HPLC, it was rather counter-intuitive to me when we started talking about it. I wish I had more experience with it but could be worse

[kriggy]

Hi again,
we crewed up real hard lol..

As I said before, Im determining adsorption isotherm of cyclosporine on SiO2 column and the numbers were weird. We knew it but didnt know where was the problem. So from friday until today (except for monday where I had exam at school) I was playing with excel to get the numbers working. I did it and the results seemed to be OK-ish. I got the results on paper and was talking to the boss. We were talking about it for days but now he decided to go check with guys in analytical lab. We went in, we asked the question and after like 30 seconds, we got the answer: wrong wavelenght!! Seriously, none realized that cyclosporine doesnt have any aromatic residues so 260nm in UV/VIS detector will see nothing., the correct wavelenght is something like 210 for peptide bonds.
The thing was that we SAW something in the spectra at 260 nm so none noticed that it is some impurity and not the compound we wanted.

In the end, nothing is lost but time. I still got my samples so the analytic guys offered us to measure the samples there next week so I stilll can get the results, hopefuly without any additional problems.

TLDR: Try to consider as much as you can as you design the experiment and consult with more experienced ppl if you have the option so you evade silly mistakes like measuring at wrong wavelenght.