The Science and Business of Drug Discovery Demystifying the Jargon
The Science and Business of Drug Discovery is written for those who want to learn about the biopharmaceutical industry and its products whatever their level of technical knowledge. Its aim is to demystify the jargon used in drug development, but in a way
- PDF / 7,316,010 Bytes
- 396 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 62 Downloads / 186 Views
Edward D. Zanders
The Science and Business of Drug Discovery Demystifying the Jargon
Edward D. Zanders, Ph.D. PharmaGuide Ltd Herts, UK [email protected]
ISBN 978-1-4419-9901-6 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-9902-3 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-9902-3 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2011931534 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 100013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
To Rosie
Preface
Jargon, according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, can either mean unintelligible words, or gibberish, barbarous or debased language, or else a mode of speech only familiar to a group or profession. Anyone trying to approach the drug discovery industry from the outside might have some sympathy with all of these definitions, particularly if required to deal with industry insiders on a professional basis. The language may indeed seem barbarous or gibberish, but mostly of course, it is the mode of speech familiar to the scientists, clinicians and business people who are responsible for discovering and developing new medicines. All the different professional groups that deal with the pharmaceutical industry will be exposed to the jargon at some point, because the business is highly technical. It is true that a nonscientist, for example, in a technology transfer office, will not be expected to have a detailed knowledge of a product or service being offered to a pharmaceutical company because that is normally left to technical colleagues. On the other hand, he or she should at least be able to recognize where these offerings fit into the bigger picture of drug discovery and why their clients might be interested in taking discussions to another level. In some ways, listening to scientists talking in a business meeting is the same as listening to conversations in a foreign language; just having a sense of the meaning rather than the full detail is enough to avoid feeling excluded. These general principles apply to other professions as well, such as recruiters and translators who, of course, have their own specific issues with jargon. So the need for a guide to the drug discovery industry for non-specialists is clear enough, but what form should it take? One possibility is a training program like the How the Dr
Data Loading...
