Clinical Research: Bringing Discoveries from the Lab to the Clinic

A career in clinical research offers an attractive potential career path for PhD graduates. Clinical research is conducted to translate preliminary results (e.g., preclinical models) into licensed therapeutics in humans. Pharmaceutical companies undertake clinical trials to measure the efficacy and safety of novel interventions or medicines. Clinical studies require the implementation of scientifically rigorous reasoning and conduct throughout their execution. Teamwork and expertise are necessary from a cross-functional group to operationalize these studies. Therefore, there are multiple highly specialized roles within clinical development that you could pursue as a profession. Clinical research offers a varied career, as you can move between roles, specialties, and pharmaceutical companies. There is also no typical day within clinical research. Each day can present a different set of tasks, dependent upon what stage of development you are currently working on. Working in the pharmaceutical industry as a clinical researcher maximizes and further hones the skills that you will have acquired by the end of your PhD study. There are many potential means of transitioning from a PhD to an industrial role in clinical research. If you choose to work in clinical research, your talents can be harnessed fully to help deliver much-needed new options for patients.