The journey that leads to a role in pharmaceutical research very often begins with the hard but rewarding years devoted to earning a PhD, years whose lessons endure. Below Mike Owen recalls some lessons of his own. Owen heads the Biopharmaceuticals Centre of Excellence for Drug Discovery at GlaxoSmithKline. In that position he manages a portfolio comprising protein therapies, gene therapies, therapeutic vaccines, and newer generations of monoclonal antibodies. Owen carried out his PhD studies in biochemistry at Cambridge University, having previously read biochemistry at Oxford University. Following post-doctoral periods at the Medical Research Council’s National Institute for Medical Research and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he worked for more than 20 years at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London. There he researched into the genetics of the immune system and the development of T lymphocytes and published over 100 peer-reviewed papers. He has been elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation and a Fellow of the of Medical Sciences.
I read Biochemistry at Oxford, my first year coinciding with the arrival of Rod Porter as the new Professor of Biochemistry. Professor Porter had discovered the structure of antibodies and shared the Nobel prize with Gerald Edelman for this discovery in 1972. During my time as an undergraduate, I developed two consuming scientific interests: cell membranes and immunology. I also learned two insights that have underpinned my scientific thinking over the past thirty years: try to ask important scientific questions (then you get important answers); strive for a molecular, mechanistic understanding of whatever you are working on.
Mike Owen heads the Biopharmaceuticals Centre of Excellence for Drug Discovery at GlaxoSmithKline. In that position he manages a portfolio comprising protein therapies, gene therapies, therapeutic vaccines, and newer generations of monoclonal antibodies.
My undergraduate career illustrates the first lesson for anyone thinking about embarking on a PhD – have a consuming interest in at least one area of science and therefore clearly know what you want to do. This does not preclude you from changing fields later in your career, but you will only negotiate the inevitable low points of PhD research by being completely committed to your research project. With a passion for research into membranes and immunology and wishing to contribute to a molecular understanding of my field, it only remained for me to choose my supervisor. This seemed easy. Mike Crumpton at the National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill was pioneering the characterisation of membranes purified from B lymphocytes and the purification of major histocompatibility locus HLA antigens. Although the functions of HLA antigens were then unknown, the belief (subsequently borne out) was that they had important immunological functions. Sadly, Mike was due to go on sabbatical in Australia and therefore was taking on no new PhD students at that time.
Back to the drawing board! In 1973, when I was looking around for PhD places, immunology was far from being a molecular science. It took the advent of cDNA cloning to characterise the cytokines and membrane proteins that orchestrate the immune response. Therefore, my attentions turned to non-immune system membrane proteins and I accepted a position at Cambridge, working with Paul Voorheis and Keith Tipton on a project to purify and characterise amino acid transporters from the parasite Trypanosoma brucei. This illustrates two more essential lessons for aspiring PhD students. Don’t think too narrowly in deciding on a PhD and pick a good supervisor in a top rank department. Why? Because a first-class training in research thinking and methodology is more important to a graduate student than immediately settling on the research area to which you will commit the rest of your working life.
There were many highs and some lows in my PhD studies. The highs were when my first experiment worked, when my first scientific paper (made available here by permission of The FEBS Journal, formerly The European Journal of Biochemistry) was accepted for publication, when I gave my first presentation on my data and, of course, when I completed and successfully defended my thesis. The lows were all those scientific blind alleys that I went along and those many experiments that failed. During the ups and downs of my PhD years I learned several important lessons that have stood me in good stead in later life. Be resilient and completely committed – no experiment is likely to work for at least the first year. Always carry out hypothesis-driven research but always be prepared to ditch that favourite theory when your data tell you to. But most of all, try to surround yourself with smarter colleagues and listen and learn from them. That’s the quickest route both to a successful PhD and a productive scientific career.
