"So what do you want to do with your degree?"

I get asked that question a lot. Rightfully so since when all is said and done I will have spent 9+ years at Purdue studying pharmaceutics (I'm on year 6 for those of you keeping score at home).  Well it turns out I have a very specific answer to that question..."I have no frickin' clue!"

Usually I will give a nice overview of my options and explain that during the course of my grad work I hope to be persuaded toward a specific career track.  Let's look at the options, shall we?

-Industry.  This is biggest and most obvious answer. Within Industry there are many paths such as big pharma companies, small pharma companies, consulting, clinical trials, and sales.  Now if I am to go into Industry I believe I would want to work as a Senior Scientist in R&D but honestly at a certain point, any job within the field works for me.

-Academia.  Get a post-doctorate position at a University, then apply to become a professor and continue up the academic chain.  I really enjoy teaching and I believe I will end up here someday.  However, I also believe that the best teachers have some industry/real life experience with pharma companies and I would want that experience as well.

-More school.  Yes, believe it or not I have not ruled out the possibility of more school. Most likely Law School to work on patent law with pharmaceuticals, but I wouldn't rule out Med School either (in order to be the top dog of a pharma company, a Ph.D. and M.D. are almost always required).  This could be in the form of night school while at a job or a mid-life go back to school "crisis."  Regardless, it will be an option for me until I figure out what to do.

All that said, I have really only realized one thing since starting grad school.  That is, I am way to interested in so many other things that I can guarantee that I will not get a position right out of school and keep it forever.  I enjoy trying new things and exploring areas which I may not be the most suited for (example is the comedy scene that I have been following my friend John around in for the last couple months, as I am not really that strong in the Arts...shout out to him, good luck at the Michiana Contest this weekend)!

Moral of the story, you could ask me, "So what do you want to do with your degree?" every time you see me and I will probably give a different answer.

An Outline to Grad School

Well, my first major graduate school requirement has been assigned to me for the spring semester.  I will be giving my “first required seminar” to the department.  I am both excited and nervous already.  Because of this I feel it’s only appropriate to give a little overview of how my graduate school outline looks. I originally was going to post a new “Under the Hood” featuring my topic for the seminar (and what will eventually become my thesis work) but I want to have a large background before I write that post so that I can accurately paraphrase, because in reality I would bet none of you really care.  But I appreciate all the site views and support for my blog regardless!

Anyway, if you go onto the Purdue IPPH website it has links for the curriculum and requirements but the links just lead to under construction pages.  So I will do my best to fill you.  The Pharmaceutics Ph.D. program is considered a five year program so I will break it down into those five years and what is expected.

Year One –

• Finish any pre-requisite classes (Physical Chemistry, Linear Algebra and Differential Equations, etc.).
• Take full course load of classes that are either helpful for your future research or helpful for background in you research area (Organic Spectroscopy, Statistical Design of Experiments, Computation Chemistry, etc.).
• STAY OUT OF TROUBLE academically!

Year Two –

• Begin working in the laboratory.
• Identify area of research for thesis (non-specific).
• Give “First Required Seminar” involving a literary review of relevant topics and preliminary data.
• Take a few more classes that could aid in your work (Properties of Solids, Crystallography, etc.)

Year Three –

• Continue lab projects.
• Take one or two more classes.
• Complete an “Oral Preliminary Exam” based on your direction of your thesis work.  Sometimes this is referred as an Opening Defense.

Year Four –

• Lab experiments.
• Write thesis.
• Enjoy life.

Year Five (and Beyond) –

• Give “Last Required Seminar” over your thesis research to the department.
• Complete your “Thesis Defense.”
• Submit your final “Thesis.”
• Get a job!

So as you can see there are essentially five big milestones for the graduate curriculum (bold).  I am excited because I am finally getting to start on the first one!  I guarantee you will be hearing much more about all of these as they come and go.

As for my First Required Seminar, that involves an hour presentation to all the professors and students in the department.  It is the stepping stone into giving presentations at conferences and preparing for the grind of publishing and defending work during and after graduate school.  Needless to say, this might be the least significant presentation I ever give professionally, but it will definitely keep me up a few nights in the near future!

Under the Hood: Nucleation

In this installment of "Under the Hood" I will briefly explain nucleation in chemical systems and how that relates to pharmaceutical research.

I find it hard to believe that anyone dislikes the Mentos and Diet Coke experiment.  So, for those of you who are curious about why that works it is because of nucleation.  Now Mythbusters proved that the rough surface of the Mentos leads to nucleation of carbon dioxide.  NOTE: The Mythbusters link is a great explanation of nucleation and may be all you need to understand this concept but I will try to provide a deeper incite into what is nucleation. Essentially, carbon dioxide is dissolved in the liquid of the Diet Coke and is sitting in the meta-stable "zone" of supersaturation.  Above this zone, the carbon dioxide would spontaneously fall out of the liquid phase in create bubbles without any stimulus. Below this zone, nothing occurs as there is not enough carbon dioxide to exhibit any reaction.

Phase Diagram for Crystallization -
[CHE 597 Notes - Purdue University]

So basically the system is unstable and needs some sort of catalyst to create bubbles and allow the carbon dioxide to escape.  Enter the Mentos.  The extremely rough surface of a Mentos creates millions of secondary nucleation sites for the carbon dioxide to react, causing a mass reaction and the explosion of Diet Coke we are accustomed to seeing.

In pharmaceuticals (and most other industrial processes), nucleation refers to the process of creating the initial solid crystals from the liquid phase.  We utilize this process for purification and specific crystal growth patterns, called habits.  Unfortunately, this can be very detrimental if we are trying to keep a drug in the liquid phase, such as the case with any dosage form meant for the blood (~90% of all drugs).  Thus understanding this process is crucial to formulation of medicine.  But, understanding this mechanism is much more difficult than first thought to be.

There are essentially three types of nucleation. The chart below is visual representation and for the sake of time I give a short statement about each.

Nucleation Types - [CHE 597 Notes; Purdue University]

Primary homogeneous nucleation - The most simple type, occurs between only the crystal species in a pure supersaturated solution.  Although the most pure form of nucleation, it is also the least utilized because the energy barrier to produce a new nuclei is the highest.

Primary heterogeneous nucleation - Again, occurs in a supersaturation solution but involves catalytic species that have "preferential sites" for forming a new nuclei.  The Mentos surface is an example of a preferential site for carbon dioxide in Diet Coke.  These sites lower the energy barrier to overcome for nucleation to occur.

Secondary nucleation - Occurs when nuclei or seed crystals of the selected species are introduced to a supersaturated solution, causing nucleation of new new crystals to form on the surface of the seeds.  Again, this lowers the energy barrier to overcome.

So why is this important?  Well, if you remember back to the amorphous post, new novel drugs which are poorly water soluble are forced to obtain higher solubilities because of the meta-stability of the amorphous forms.  This causes supersaturations, which can lead to nucleation (and in the body, heterogeneous nucleation and secondary nucleation dominate making these processes more likely than pure supersaturations).  So, if we can understand how nucleation occurs and can prevent it in the stomach long enough to allow absorption into the blood stream...we have done our job.  If only it were that easy...

Previously, the Classical Nucleation Theory (CNT) dominated the general idea about nucleation.  But over the past 10 years or so, a new two-step theory has begun to emerge, which includes two barriers to overcome (see picture to the right).  There is evidence to support both theories and now the field is at a crossroads as to how to interpret the data and formulate a theory to include all cases.  Obviously it is more complex than we originally thought but there is some truth to the CNT and we cannot discredit all the work that has gone into that theory.

To sum up, understanding nucleation mechanics and kinetics is crucial to the development of novel formulations for new drugs.  Although the science of liquids and solids is well understood, transitions are always tricky and nucleation is no exception.  Hopefully a correlation between all the data and the proposed theories (both classical and two-step) can be determine in the near future.  All and all, part of my graduate work in the future will be dealing with nucleation mechanisms!

Harnessing the Power

Duel-cores, triple-cores, quad cores, sex-cores (that's six for those who don't know their prefixes), it's hard to keep up with processing power these days.  I remember when my Dad bought our first family PC.  It was a Gateway 2000 and it was a serious toss-up as to what I liked more; solitaire on the computer or the cow painted box.  And I remember getting my first major PC game, NCAA Football '98 and it couldn't run on our computer.  It required the old Pentium II chip.  Well now I have upgraded my personal PC to the AMD Phenom X4.  Granted it is still on the old 65nm architecture as compared to the new Phenom II's that have 45nm, but it is quite fast.  And now both Intel and AMD have the "sex-core" processors on the market between the Phenom II X6 and Core i7.  "But Matthew, why do I care?"  You probably don't but I wanted to mark a reference for you when I explain the "computer" I am working on in my Computational Chemistry course.

Computational Chemistry is exactly what it sounds like.  It uses computer algorithms to calculate how particles act.  More specifically their energy in my current lab.  Now, I was frustrated that the lab consisted of a Linux Shell program not because it was Linux, but because we were given no formal background on coding in the system.  I think Linux is simpler and I hope to utilize it some day in the future but I began ranting and raving to a few friends about how I don't understand why we can't pay Computer Scientists to make programs for Windows/MAC that I can just input data into and read the output without being a coding expert.  This is a carry over from my statistical courses as they employ the same thing into programs such as SAS.

In my frustration I found myself searching for a "help section" for this shell program.  The program/project is called Steele and it is a compute cluster that can be used remotely on campus for calculations.  It is basically access to a computer that links many processors to together in order to make elaborate calculations housed on campus at Purdue.  This is where I found my surprise.  The Steele compute cluster (named after an old professor) houses an astonishing 902 8-core Dell processors.  902! That is 7216 cores for those of you keeping score at home!  Each processor consists of two Quad-cores that are linked together.  To a pion like myself, that is almost unfathomable.  Now I understand why we use this program.  The cores are separated into further clusters, the largest one being able to compute 46.53 teraflops (basically a calculation per second, it is more complicated than that but I'm not an expert and will probably mess it up).  A Phenom processor similar to mine was clocked at 6.7 gigaflops.  This is about a 7,000,000% increase in computations.  Wow!

Now, here's where I stopped thinking about these types of calculations...I ran a simple program that uses a random number generator to calculate the energy of a particle 10,000 times and it took the computer about 20 seconds to run this program. The computer with 7216 cores needed time to think about my simple little calculation. Now there are scientists running much, much larger calculations on much larger computers.  That is when I had to stop thinking about the magnitude of this computer and starting writing down answers.  So sorry Dad for complaining about not having that Pentium II processor.

Back from Break

It has been awhile.  Last time I wrote that it was before finals and that I would get back to posting after the Holiday break.  Well, it is now two weeks into the new semester and this is my first update.  Let me explain.

Over the break I anticipated outlining my graduate studies and getting started on a research project.  As it turns out, this process takes longer than one semester.  I have begun "laboratory" hours but this consists of reading research articles and papers within the my field of study in order to narrow my project focus.  Basically I will be doing background work for this semester before I actually start to outline my thesis work this summer.  How this relates to my blog...I fully intend to write about the every activities of a graduate research assistant.  Having worked with a grad student toward the end of his grad work, I know that I will have plenty to write about eventually; such as internship opportunities, guest lecturers, research symposiums, and interactions with the leaders in the field.  I want to share my experience with everyone and maybe even inspire a few people.  Unfortunately I am not quite there yet but for now, I will continue to write about any and all things relating to my experiences as new grad student at Purdue.   So....

Most recently College Gameday was here on campus.  It was an awesome experience and it was great to see the student body come together with alumni to cheer our Boilermakers.  Although the actual game revolves around the team, there was something very fulfilling about screaming my lungs out with 14,000+ other Boilermakers for 6 hours (4 for College Gameday and 2 for the game).  As a Purdue sports fan we our conditioned to support our teams through thick and thin.  We've been there when Drew Brees led us to the Rose Bowl and when Kyle Orton had "the fumble" when the football version of College Gameday was here on campus.  We supported out basketball team when the Big Dog, Glenn Robinson led Purdue to the first of three straight Big Ten titles and when Gene Keady had a farewell season to forget.  Overall, I personally believe the Purdue fan base and alumni are some of the most loyal and enthusiastic fans in the country and it is an honor to be apart of something as special as College Gameday.

In other news, the College of Pharmacy is starting a new mentoring program for undergraduate students.  Basically, they are matching up graduates students in the three departments (Pharmacy Practice, Industrial and  Physical Pharmacy, and Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology).  Now I am very excited to be a apart of this new program because I was essentially a mentoree for a grad student a few years ago, and it was because of that experience that I am in grad school today.  The interesting thing is that the undergraduates can either ask to matched with a grad student based on discipline or they can select the grad student based on a short presentation we give.  And when I say short, I mean short.  See the following powerpoint slide....

Yep, that's all they want from me.  I assume that at the end of the meeting this week, the line up us grad students like we are being picked for dodgeball teams in Jr. High.  It should be interesting.  (And yes, I am using a picture of my adorable nephew as a selling point, DON"T JUDGE ME!)

Be on the look out for the Friday Fragments (short bits on news in science).  I hope to keep updating the blog daily (or every other day).  Also feel free to email me at pharmjack29@gmail.com if you have questions about grad school, pharmaceutical sciences, Purdue, or anything seen in my blog.  Thanks for all the support!

Behind the (Lab) Bench

As I walked on campus the other day I recognized a few sports players (b.t.w. Ryan Kerrigan is huge), I wondered what life would be like if students and future professionals were treated like star athletes in the media. So, I will be profiling some of my academic and professional ventures in a series called Behind the (Lab) Bench. I like this idea because instead writing entries in a dull, to the point voice, I can allow everyone to see how my minds works within my academic and career goals. This week...Recruiting!

Author's note: I originally wrote this piece in first person but it sounded ridiculous. So I tried it in third person, and now it just sounds only a little smug.

Ok science fans, let's take a look at one of the up and coming recruits in the pharmaceutics world.

Matt Jackson is a Midwest Pharmaceutical Science recruit for the Boilers Industrial and

Physical Pharmacy (IPPH) department. Being one of five new recruits for Purdue this, he is the only one from the Midwest which bodes well for this class as the more diversity within the

lab, the more collaboration. Matt graduated from Purdue in May of 2010 and decided on Purdue over Kentucky, Northeastern, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Matt said this about his decision, "Besides the location being close to home, Purdue's experience in solid state chemistry and close relationship with pharmaceutical industry ultimately pushed Purdue over the edge for my decision." Matt's undergrad career involved some research in the IPPH department under Dr. Taylor resulting in both a poster symposium and a published paper.

But now we focus on Matt's upcoming decision on which lab he will choose. If you follow Purdue IPPH closely, you know that Dr. Taylor has solidified her place within the IPPH department with her research in amorphous drug properties. You should also know that there is a new IPPH department head in Dr. Topp. At first, it looked as though Matt was recruited to come work for Dr. Taylor but now it seems to be a two horse race. Now Matt has shown interest in amorphous research so let's look at the tale of the tape...

Both lab groups have some research in amorphous solids and thus the science world must wait on Matt's decision. He has scheduled visits to each lab in the next couple weeks and has met with both professor's about his decision. Also, the lab must also return the favor and accept him into their lab. So we will keep a close eye on this developing recruiting trail.

See, isn't that more fun?

(If you are interested in getting the "Behind the Bench" treatment, for any profession...just let me know and we can do a Special Edition of the series!)