The Half Decent Pharmaceutical Chemistry Blog

A sunny Sunday might not be the ideal moment to fill some official papers for my official enrolment at Imperial College: 22 degrees and a cloudless sky are an inviting opportunity for an afternoon spent lying in the sun with a beer and a nice book.
I must admit while typing these words I’m thoroughly considering this as an excellent solution, but before eventually heading for a park with a can of Guinness and, why not, the forms I received from Imperial, I want to write a remarkably (hopefully) personal and, at the same time, useful post about Oxbridge and their application procedure systems.

Let’s start from the end: to apply for the position I managed to get all I had to do was to send an email to my (at that time) potential supervisor, with a copy of my CV and the name of at least two academic referees. He invited me to London for a formal interview, at the end of which I was already offered the job. The MRC (Medical Research Council) provided me with two nights accommodation at a lovely and incredibly homely guest house in Hammersmith, plus all my travel expenses were paid back.
Then, I received forms from the MRC itself, followed by those from Imperial and, finally, Leukaemia Research, which is the organization actually financing my project.

To sum up, because this is what this post is mostly about, I haven’t paid a penny.

Back in December, I applied for a couple of projects at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, which, as my future employer (CSC) is part of Imperial College, is formally a part of the university of Cambridge. Therefore, you need to submit two, separated applications: one to the LMB and the other to the “host” university.
Whereas the former, perhaps due to the fact that this is another MRC-based organization, was for free and, once invited for the interviews, both accommodation and travel expenses got reimbursed, the on-line application to the university cost £25. What’s more, outdated as it may sound, I had to (quickly) send a paper copy of all the papers and forms I had already electronically sent to them through the post: this means I had to ask my refs not only to send their reference letters via email, but also to print them out, put 3 (!) copies in a sealed envelop (together with 3 copies of other documents I had to fill in and make them sign). Those envelops had to be ridiculously signed on the outside, just  across the seal, and the signature was to be protected with a bit of sticky tape. All these complicated procedures were meant to prevent anyone (me?) from forging the precious content and to keep it secret to me (ha ha ha!).
Nevertheless, although pathetically old-fashioned, Cambridge was rather quick in letting me know the (negative) outcome of my application and the LMB was very kind throughout my staying at Addenbrooke’s for the interview. All things considered, thus, I may still look at them for a PostDoc.
Sadly (?), I cannot say the same for the rival counterpart: Oxford. Sure, their £25 on-line application system is simpler, more user-friendly, incredibly quicker to complete and it doesn’t even require a paper submission afterwards.
However, unlike my interview at LMB, I have no photograph of Oxford to show you as my interview was over the phone. I know this is not that unusual, but it still sounds idiotic to me (and I really do mean that!).
Even more infuriating was their timing. On leaving Addenbrooke’s, I was told a final decision would have been taken shortly and, whatever the outcome, they would have contacted me no later than a certain day (two weeks time, to be precise): I was told the result one before the deadline.

It took Oxford (dep. of biochemistry) more than a month to come up with an answer: by that time (interview on February 29, no news until April 3), I had already gone through my interview at Imperial, accepted it and submitted all the official papers to the MRC. To make things worse, after my phone interview (which doesn’t really give you any opportunity to know anything about the group and place you might join) I was told they would have informed me “at least within a week”.

Therefore, I can already tell you The Euchromatic Blog will be hypercritical to Oxford University.

It’s important, anyhow, to make absolutely clear that the position I’ve got is, by a large margin, the best one from many points of view (the only drawback is that I’d have liked to live in small, peaceful and full-of-students Cambridge rather than in a huge city such as London). I applied to LMB mostly because of its fame and then turned to Oxford and Imperial for opposite reasons: the former to try both sides of Oxbridge, the latter because of the project itself. In fact, I haven’t talked about the other successful applications I turned down because fortunately already with a gorgeous project in my hands (which means I won't go to Switzerland...).

Back in December, when I was frantically visiting one of my academic supervisors to make him sign official forms to back my application for a studentship, I was told the faculty of pharmacy was to award some money to particularly bright students. Unlike what generally happens in Italy, where grants are given on the basis of how poor you are (or, more likely, how poor you make the government believe you are), in this case it was all about the merit: number of exams taken, how quickly you’ve marched through them and your marks. Simple and fair, isn’t it?

Two years ago, I had been so stupid I didn’t even realise such a thing was going on (for the first time in the recent history of the faculty), while last year there was no money for such generous gifts. This year, though, I gave it a try. And guess what? I have make it: I’ve awarded on of the three €1,000 cheques. An amount of money predictably reduced once taxes will have been paid, but none the less a considerable sum, which I plan to spend almost entirely. First of all, I will get myself a proper digital camera, to finally take decent pictures for the next blog. Or, instead, turn to a video camera to turn myself into another, annoying, European, independent film-maker.
Plus, perhaps, a new, Euchromatic Blog-tagged iPod. Actually it may not have anything to do with technology: there are clothes, wines, etc. There are so many gratifying ways of burning your money these days.

It’s not only about the money, to tell you the truth: I’m pleased by the fact that, in the end, and on the verge of leaving this university, years of hard work yield some sort of financial feedback.

The news came as totally unexpected: the deadline was on March 3 or some and, in the meantime, some many things happened that I had almost forgotten about it, assuming that someone else had been given the award and the faculty hadn’t bothered sending a mail to the rest of the candidates (which is how people at Oxford university do when dealing with your application for a studentship).

By the way, feel free to share your opinions on the best way to invest this amount of money.

Last Wednesday I took part in an event the Students Association of the Faculty of Pharmacy organize every year: on two separated days, people from the fourth year are presented the type study done in the groups they could apply for carrying out their graduation thesis project. Generally, on the first day, it is “chemical” area to be under the spotlight, while the second day is dedicated to the “biological” one.

Theoretically, every year, every group leader should send someone. Anyone. In fact, although the (good) idea behind this event is that students who are in the middle of their project describe all the (sordid) details to their one-year-younger counterpart, apparently, it is far from being an unusual circumstance to have full-time PhDs to represent a lab.
Still, some times, a professor simply doesn’t care and no one turns up. This, in a few words, is what happened last year with my group: not having any pharma chemist there, my current supervisor should have done it, but she was just too busy and, predictably, not that committed to the cause.

This year, though, it was my turn. As a fifth year student, reaching the end of his job here, it’s hard to come up with a better profile. Or isn’t it? You see, the moment my group leader asked me whether I could work out a short (10 minutes) presentation for the occasion, I instantly saw a huge problem: since I had decided to embark on a molecular biology project during my third year and quickly communicated my intentions to my present group leader, last year I didn’t think for a second to waste a couple of lectures-free mornings to hear things I had been told already and, plainly, opted for staying in bed longer and go to a lab-course in the afternoon. This meant I had no idea what kind of information I was supposed to provide.

Neither the Students Association’s member to whom I wrote an email with my questions nor my lab mates helped. The former told me of some slides concerning the them of my thesis, the latter wanted me to focus on the techniques I am utilizing.

The result was remarkable and impressive: a perfect presentation for the day I’ll defend my thesis in front of the board. I realised I’ve collected such a quantity of juicy data, it wouldn’t be mad to start writing (perhaps just the introduction and part of the results), even though I literally cannot graduate before July.
Unfortunately, this brilliant and comprehensive presentation seems not to have impressed the students that much. Although a rather interesting drug, Teniposide, had a lot of attention. This drug has been a fantastic tool to address the question of whether a detected phenomenon of Topoisomerase inhibitor on RNA polymerase II was selective for Topo IB or not: teniposide (or, as it’s better known among my lab mates, VM 26) is a remarkably selective Topo II inhibitor, which is perfect for highlighting Topo I specificities. Moreover, teniposide is a useful clinical tool in the treatment of acute myeloblastic leukaemia.

As a brief reminder, Topo Is (as there are both IA and IB types) nick only one strand of a DNA duplex structure, while Topo IIs nick both strands. I’ve always found amazing that, despite being largely employed in many chemotherapy regimens, little is known about the mechanism of action of topoisomerase inhibitors. Giving molecular biologists a juicy research field.

Going back to my performance, I sincerely doubt that any one would choose our group (and molecular biology as a subject): both my short but accurate description of how a ChIP or a Real Time PCR work gave my audience a good idea about what I do, but I sort of suddenly lost them when words such as “promoter”, “siRNA” or “transfection” (inevitably?) came out of my mouth.

I already speak a different language (not to mention that all the slides were in English...).

The REAL reason why I have dramatically reduced the number of posts has little to do with the fact that I’m working at my graduation thesis project. Actually, it has been a consequence of my quest for an interesting available project for the next year: before choosing whether to submit any application, you need to read as much as possible about not only the area of research involved but also on the group’s itself, and if invited for an interview, you need to prepare yourself properly. Let’s say the last months have been all but relaxing and stress-free.
Call it superstition but I decided to never mention my application forms for a PhD studentship. Even my family and friends had no idea what was really going on. Until now, when I’ve been formally offered one at Imperial College, London, that I have obviously accepted.

So, from October 2008 I’ll live in one the biggest, most chaotic, coolest and most exciting cities on the planet. To be honest, I have almost exclusively considered England for my PhD as I wanted to live in place where I could fully interact with the locals even outside the lab (where your English is generally sufficient to interact with colleagues and boss). No enquiry was sent to lovely places such as France, Germany (although I considered Switzerland), Sweden, etc., and, because I somehow wanted to remain in Europe (at least for the PhD), England looked the ideal solution.
Generally speaking, though, I have always wanted to become a PhD and to work at a project abroad, even before I realised what my main interests were, and always been attracted by the dear old Blighty (I guess many of you don’t know what this means, do you?).

I was interviewed by both Oxford (department of biochemistry) and Cambridge (the famous MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology), but we were both looking for something else. Anyway, I am going to dedicate a post to this as I’ve had radically different impressions about them: all I want to say, at the moment, is that I may still consider Cambridge for a PostDoc, whereas I sincerely doubt I’ll have anything to do with Oxford University in the future (although they still have to tell me whether I got the job or not).

By the way, I’ve managed to get what was at the very first place in my wish-list (by a large margin, indeed): a position at the Gene Regulation and Chromatin Group of the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre at Hammersmith hospital, which is part of the faculty of medicine of Imperial College.

The studentship is a 4-year Gordon Piller Studentship kindly provided by Leukaemia Research and offers a £16,228 annual stipend plus fees, with an allowance of £11,564 towards research costs. However, I hope you to believe money is the least of the reasons I find this project so appealing. I will certainly provide more details later on, but, to sum up, I just would like you to want it encompasses all my major interests in molecular biology.

Stay tuned: massive news to come soon…

Spring has finally arrived! Therefore, I enjoyed my duty of correcting exams in the sun. Not a long job, to tell you the truth, but rather gratifying and useful given my interest in eventually becoming a lecturer, one day.

Now, I’ve decided to draw some absolutely meaningless graphs to analyze the trend of the results. First, the fundamental question of which gender did the best job: ladies (always to go first) or gentlemen?

The former seem to have done slightly better.
Then, because the exams was taken not only by my colleagues, but also by some weird people who study an incredibly pointless thing, which should give them the opportunity find a job as pharmaceutical promoters among pharmacists: what a life! So, here things change a little bit, showing a difference between male pharma chemists and these wannabe, pharmaceutical traveling salesmen.
Last but not least, how the whole test went. Not very well, as the third graph shows (considering 12.5 means no mistakes).
See you soon, with more relevant data from my thesis project (hopefully).