PharmD or PhD?

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Propofol482

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I am trying to decide what degree I should work towards, and would appreciate it if a professional could give me advice. I am interested in research and eventually starting my own sports supplement business. Can anyone tell me whether a PharmD or a PhD in chemistry would be better? I have been a certified tech for 6 years and worked in the retail, hospital, and compounding settings so I know I am interested in the field from my experience. Any advice would be appreciated.

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PhD in Medicinal Chemistry will probably be the best, in my opinion.
 
If you want a PhD, go for pharmaceutics for sure!

There are many positions in industry with this PhD and a big area within pharmaceutics is pharmacokinetics / pharmacodynamics. This is basically how about when you take a drug what the drug does to the body and the opposite: what the body does to the drug. This involves a combination of biochemistry, physiology, and mathematics (differential equations). You should be strong in all three.

To me, this is more interesting than the PharmD however, I think the knowledge that you would gain from the PharmD would be the tip of the iceberg for the amount of knowledge you need to be successful in this area.

Perhaps a PharmD / PhD combination would be best in this case.

Or try drug information residency after PharmD. Those are the two biggest areas if you want to go into industry or the FDA, CDC, or NIH.

Good luck!
 
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Do you have any research experience? I don't think many PhD programs will take you seriously if you haven't had any research experience. Even though it's much less intensive as an undergrad, you do get a chance to interact with grad students and get a taste of life as a grad student.
 
tcid said:
Do you have any research experience? I don't think many PhD programs will take you seriously if you haven't had any research experience. Even though it's much less intensive as an undergrad, you do get a chance to interact with grad students and get a taste of life as a grad student.

I'm still an undergrad. When I figure out what degree I want to work towards I will gain research experience in that field. Thanks for the replies so far. I like the pharmaceutics idea a lot.
 
You definately want to get a PhD and some research experience. I did undergrad research in a Pharmaceutics/Orgo lab. I'm glad I did because I really it wasn't for me. In pharmacy school we get about 3 semesters worth of Med Chem and they don't teach you out to synthesize the compounds so it really wouldn't benefit you if you want to do research. I'd pick a major, get some research, and go for the PhD. Good luck!
 
Propofol482 said:
I am trying to decide what degree I should work towards, and would appreciate it if a professional could give me advice. I am interested in research and eventually starting my own sports supplement business. Can anyone tell me whether a PharmD or a PhD in chemistry would be better? I have been a certified tech for 6 years and worked in the retail, hospital, and compounding settings so I know I am interested in the field from my experience. Any advice would be appreciated.
I would recommend a PhD and a MBA. Although it probably could be done with a PharmD, a PhD would give you more options and "higher" qualifications. People with a PhD in pharmacology or medicinal chemistry are generally considered to have a greater knowledge base than a PharmD. The PharmD basically qualifies you to run a pharmacy (clinical or retail) practice.
 
I've seen people start successful businesses without formal business training, so in the interest of reducing your time in school I think the MBA might be overkill. If you have a good business sense and are still an undergrad maybe you could tack on an Entrepreneurship minor if it's available to you. The people I'v seen start businesses were working in industry, saw a possible need, and used the knowledge they already had to make it happen so their situation is a little different.

As far as a sports supplement business, I guess it depends on what your goals are. If you are concentrating on creating novel products then it seems as though the PharmD will not cut it. You'll need some kind of pharmacology or medicinal chem PhD there to take care of the drug discovery, which it seems like a PharmD does not prepare you enough for in techniques and experience. I'm not sure exactly what medicinal chem entails but I believe some chem knowledge, perhaps more than a pharmacology phd would have, is necessary to find the best way to mass produce a drug in a cost effective way once it's discovered. All in all it sounds stressful, and unlike other fields like engineering where most of the cost is just computers and labor, making small businesses easier to start, scientific research can potentially require much more in material cost and facilities.

If the primary goal of your business is something other than creating original drugs such as simply selling them as a middleman or retail, then the pharmd will probably serve you better. Plus should things go sour, the pharmd is much safer to fall back on.

Also you are much more on the pharmd path right now since you've been a pharm tech for so long. Getting into a PhD program will require recommendation letters, usually a minimum of one is to be from someone you did undergrad research for. Also if you do undergrad research you can ask some of the grad students what they think and also find out how much they hate being Phd's. j/k...sort of
 
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