Page 97 - Mousumi: Unbelievable Transformation

the guidelines of the Institutional Animal Ethics Committee and Committee for
the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals. While
carrying out such experiments, animal care is always given priority, and only
authorized persons are allowed to carry out the procedures. Only if a drug gives
the desired results in multiple animal model systems, it is taken up for the clinical
trials with the help of or solely by the pharmaceutical companies. There the drug
is first given to the healthy human volunteers for testing its safety and then if
found safe is tested on the patients who volunteer for the trial(s). During the
stages of drug testing on a patient, strict guidelines need to be followed and
consent taken in case of any mishap. Besides this, there are new approaches
coming up to reduce the number of animals being used in preclinical research
which include employing in-silico software-based model systems and use of
artificial intelligence for the preliminary screening of the drug molecules.

It takes about 2.6 billion US dollars and an average time of at least
twelve to fifteen years for a drug to reach from the preclinical stages to reach the
market. Moreover, there is a very high rate of translational failure of drugs and
only one out of five thousand tested compounds actually make it to the market.
Therefore, work in this field demands a lot of patience, persistence, and
perseverance. A person working in this field is bound to encounter failures more
than success, but he/she will always add up something to the meaningful
scientific literature which could be utilized for further investigations.

With an increase in the incidence rates of neurological disorders,
neuropharmacologists are in high demand in the Research and Development
units of most of the pharmaceutical industries and as well as in the government-
funded research centres. Most of these job opportunities offer a handsome salary
with sharp increments over the period. Though, a challenging job it offers a lot
of promise in terms of scope and diverse functions carried out by a
neuropharmacologist.

Bhupesh Vaidya
Research Scholar

♦♦Career Mantra♦♦ Page 96