Career R&D: Alternative vocation is growing in respect

A booming biotechnology industry offers doctors more options for life outside clinical practice.

By Mike Norbut, AMNews staff. May 3, 2004.

As career paths go for physicians, the move into the biotechnology industry always has been, to paraphrase poet Robert Frost, the road less traveled. With dreams of making a mark in medicine through private practice, academic teaching or clinical research, doctors just haven't had the same interest in joining a company dedicated to developing a specific drug or product.

But the success of many companies, both clinically and financially, has changed some perceptions in the medical community, and many physicians who have chosen to move into biotechnology have found life to be just as green, if not greener. Indeed, for a physician who is feeling swarmed by the bureaucracy of medicine today, the biotech outlet could make all the difference.

While the stigma of working in biotech is not gone, it certainly has diminished greatly, physicians said. It no longer raises eyebrows when a doctor chooses to move from clinical medicine into biotechnology; the chance to develop a therapy that can help thousands of people, avoid the hassles of managed care and rising liability insurance premiums, and make a healthy living certainly sounds more noble, and smarter, than it once might have.

"I did go look for [a career in biotech], but like most physicians, I was told that's not what you did," said Penelope Manasco, MD, a pediatric endocrinologist by training and chief medical officer for First Genetic Trust, a provider of secure information technology infrastructure that assists biotech firms with drug discovery and development. The firm has offices in Deerfield, Ill., and Rutherford, N.J. "I've been able to keep my scientific interest. I still have a good salary, and I have my weekends, which is important to me as a mother," Dr. Manasco said.