As she neared the end of her postdoctoral fellowship, Nathalie Fuentes knew that she loved mentoring trainees and developing her own research. However, as she saw the stress her advisors went through pursuing funding, she decided that wasn’t something she wanted to endure. So, when the time came to choose the next step of her career journey, she turned her attention to positions in industry. As she soon learned, though, pursuing careers beyond academia comes with its own quirks.
Navigating a Path into Industry
After deciding that she would leave academia, Fuentes searched for industry positions but she soon realized that the path was not as simple as filling out new job applications. “I didn't have a lot of contacts inside of industry, so I think that was my mistake,” Fuentes said, explaining that these connections can make securing interviews and jobs in industry easier. “My [curriculum vitae] and my network was ready [for me] to go into an academic position, but not into an industry position.”
After scaling down her CV to a focused resume for each position that highlighted her relevant skills for each role, the doors of the industry opened for her. After successfully navigating interviews and presentations, Fuentes received four job offers. One of the positions was at AstraZeneca.
“They called me while I was driving,” Fuentes recalled. “I parked in a Starbucks, and that's where my negotiation happened.” Ultimately, she accepted the position as a senior scientist developing models of asthma and lung inflammation to study the effect of the microbiome on these processes. Fuentes thought that it perfectly matched her previous experience in asthma and cell and molecular biology research. “I ended up selecting AstraZeneca which, at that time, I thought was the unicorn position,” said Fuentes.
“When I got into that team, everything was okay. I was working towards developing my models. No problem, no issues. We had funding. We have a lot of toys to play with, a lot of equipment when compared to government or academia,” Fuentes said. However, because she started during the COVID-19 pandemic, about a year and a half into the position, the company converted her team to focus on the role of the microbiome on vaccine and immune therapies. “For me, it was very eye opening,” Fuentes recalled the experience of how quickly industry projects can change.
She decided that although she did not want to learn how to be a microbiologist, she was ready to try something new. Because she had been networking within the company, she learned about an opening in a different department. She applied and switched over into a senior scientist position in the biopharmaceutical development group. Now, she works in the latest stages of drug development. “Everything that I touch, everything that I work on, goes to patients,” Fuentes said, who finds this to be a highlight of this position.
Preparing Drugs for Clinical Trials and Commercial Markets
In her role, Fuentes studies drug stability and its regulatory approval. “I make sure that our drugs are safe and stable for the patient,” Fuentes said. When her team receives new lots of a pharmaceutical, they subject the vials and their contents to vigorous shaking, direct light, and cycles of freeze-thawing and then determines if any of these conditions damaged the formulation. “Because it's not the same sending the drug to Puerto Rico, to Africa, or hot countries [as it is] to Alaska or Norway,” Fuentes explained. “We need to make sure our drugs are stable under those environmental conditions.”
Fuentes includes these results in the forms for regulatory approval. This information is also useful in the clinical trial stage, where she can answer questions about whether a product should be used if for any reason a drug wasn’t kept at the recommended storage conditions.
Since AstraZeneca ships products internationally, Fuentes stays up to date with the policies in those locations so that her team has all of the necessary documentation for those applications. She also writes the instruction manual and the investigator’s brochure for each drug. If the information at any time over the course of the drug being on the market needs updated, she is responsible for making those changes.
In addition to her benchwork and regulatory tasks, Fuentes still has opportunities to train others, including students through the company’s internship program and junior scientists. “Another thing that I really, really enjoy is my outreach work,” Fuentes said. One outreach project that she works on is RealHOPE, which collects information about how biological products are used by patients and healthcare personnel. The goal of the initiative is to help the company design better stability testing and product use information in the future.
How Does an Industry Role Compare to One in Academia?
According to Fuentes, one distinction between research in academia and in industry is the control one has on research topics. At a university, investigators choose what they want to study, whereas all projects in industry serve the company’s strategic plan. “However, industry offers a different kind of autonomy where you can focus on target discovery, or in my case, applied research with a clear path toward impacting patient outcomes or product development,” she said. Additionally, Fuentes found that the timelines in industry are more defined than those in a lot of academic research, and there is a better vision of how the work that you do translates into real-world applications.
For those considering a move into industry, Fuentes highly recommends networking, which can be as simple as talking to people who work in roles of interest. An informational interview can not only help one learn about that job, but these conversations can also lead to referrals that help the applicant stand out.
Another great opportunity, Fuentes noted, to prepare for a career in industry is to pursue an internship with a company. “That's going to put your foot in the door,” she said. “You're going to start meeting people, and if you leave a great impression, trust me, they will remember.”
However, Fuentes explained that tailoring one’s resume to match the job description and emphasizing transferable skills from graduate school will also help applicants highlight their fit for the role. Additionally, although she said that a long-term postdoctoral fellowship isn’t necessary, a short position is helpful. “What I recommend if you really, really think you're going into industry and you want to skip the postdoc is to consider a postdoc in industry,” Fuentes said. Although they are competitive, these positions are often structured so that people can transition directly into the company at the end of the postdoctoral contract.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
