Society for Endocrinology

Career profile: Endocrinologists in Industry

Dr Dave Smith, Team Leader, Diabetes and Obesity Drug Discovery, AstraZeneca, Cheshire

Post-school Qualifications

BSc (Hons) Biochemistry, University of Bristol
PhD in protein turnover, Heart & Lung Institute, University of London

Career History

Completed a PhD and then a post-doc at the Heart & Lung Institute followed by another at Southampton. Became a lecturer in London at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital (now part of Imperial College), was promoted to senior lecturer and then moved on to current position at AstraZeneca in 2001.

Dave’s Story

As you will see I am a bit of an amateur endocrinologist and jack-of-all-trades having at various stages also been a biochemist and then a pharmacologist! I did my PhD with Professor Peter Sugden on cardiac protein turnover, which gave me a good grounding in ex-vivo preparations and basic analytical biochemistry. I then switched to receptor biochemistry and went on to Southampton, working with Dr Graham Sale on insulin receptor signalling. I was later lucky enough to be offered a lectureship in Professor Steve Bloom’s department at what is now Imperial College, continuing the receptor theme but on peptide GPCRs. At Imperial came the endocrinology! I set up my own lab and worked extensively on peptide receptors and control of beta-cell function and hypothalamic control of appetite. This gave me a lot of excellent experience in working collaboratively in a big group (Steve Bloom’s group consisted of about 40 researchers) in many areas and I also saw some of the clinical side of research. I then left the bright lights and academic life of London for industry in the northern countryside, beginning with AstraZeneca (AZ) in 2001.

What Dave has found difficult

At first industry was very big and confusing to me (5000 people work at Alderley Park) with its many acronyms and ever increasing layers of management. However, it does all quickly make sense and what you do as a basic researcher in drug discovery is not, at least at an experimental level, very different from academia. You do have to produce a lot of reviews and justification to management about what you do, however this is not necessarily bad and is a lot less soul-sapping than grant writing. I do miss seeing my publications accepted and the responsibility for my own chosen area of work but there is still opportunity to publish and collaborate with academics.

What Dave has found beneficial

I had heard a lot of comments about industry constantly and radically changing people’s areas of research but this has not been my experience at AZ. The equipment and labs are, as you might expect, excellent but the standard of science in industry is also very good, especially at the bench level. I can see that industry wouldn’t be every academics’ cup of tea but it does have advantages in no grant writing and not having to worry about whether you will have the money to continue your work next year. For someone like me with knowledge of a lot of different fields of biology, this disadvantage in academia is a positive advantage in industry. Altogether I’m glad I moved here!