Profile

I live in Macclesfield, in Cheshire. If you don’t know where that is, it’s right next to the Peak District, and just a few minutes on the train from the centre of Manchester, in the North-West of England. I often have some lovely views of the Peak District countryside, especially from the large windows in the lab at work!

I don’t have any pets of my own, but I would love to have my own dog in the future. We’ve always had at least one dog in the family right from when I was a young child.

Some of my favourite TV shows are: Taskmaster, The Big Bang Theory, Britain’s Got Talent, Friends, Only Connect, Masterchef, Bake Off, and Line of Duty. I also like listening to Radio 2, and live cricket when I can.

I have always enjoyed science and maths, but I didn’t really know exactly what I wanted to do for a long time, other than ‘something scientific’. I only started learning more about the exact sort of jobs that exist in chemistry when I was at university.

After gaining my A levels in Chemistry, Maths, Biology, and German, I went on to study for a Masters degree, Chemistry with Study in Industry, at the University of Sheffield. I spent a year at GSK in Stevenage (just north of London) as part of this.

After this, I stayed at Sheffield to do a PhD, across Chemistry and Medicine. I spent a lot of my time making compounds which we thought might have anti-inflammatory effects. I completed this successfully, meaning I now get to call myself Dr!

I then spent two years as a postdoc researcher at University of Leeds. Following on from this, I moved to Macclesfield to become a Senior Scientist in Process Chemistry at AstraZeneca, which is what I do now. I absolutely love my job and want to keep doing it for a long time!

I help to work out how we’re going to make new drug molecules on a big scale, as well as we possibly can, and as clean as we possibly can. We want to make sure we can make enough for anyone who may need it in the future, whilst also making sure we’re protecting our environment as much as possible at the same time.

We always need new drugs to help us cure new diseases, as well as old diseases which we’ve not been able to find good cures for yet (such as various cancers). Once the medicinal chemists and biologists have developed a new drug, we need to be able to make a large amount of it (up to kilograms, and even tonnes!), to be able to supply the various clinical trials, safety tests, stability tests, etc. Only once these (and lots of other tests) have been done, and if the results are good, can the drug be approved for use in the clinic – that means that patients can then have access to it if they need it.

For all of these tests, and also for supplying to clinics in the country and around the world, we need to be able to make lots and lots of this drug. During the initial development, only very small amounts (milligrams) of this drug will have been made. The methods used are quite often not very suitable for scaling up to large amounts, perhaps to due safety, or environmental reasons. That’s where process chemists such as myself come in.

My job is to look at how we can make the molecule in a better way that’s suitable for making large amounts of the drug. I might look at different routes of making the molecule, or using different reagents for the same reaction. I want to make the compounds as efficiently as possible, as safely as possible, whilst minimising waste. I also have to look at how we can get the compound out of the reaction once I’ve made it. This involves looking at isolating and purifying the molecule.

I find it all incredibly interesting! I still learn new things all the time, which I love. I also get to see pretty colours and sometimes some fizzing! Most of all, I love knowing that I’m working towards helping another new drug to find its way into the clinic, to help patients all around the world get better.

I get to work, check my e-mails, and plan out my work for the day ahead. Then I go in to the lab, set up my equipment, weigh out my materials, and do my reaction. I analyse it and work out what do next. I often solve problems, try different things, and even throw it away if it’s no good! I record all my results so that others can read them if they need to. I also go to meetings, present my work, help others, and do little bits of teaching.