Collaborative PhD programme 1

Hi, my name is Karina and I am currently a final year PhD student on the GSK University of Strathclyde collaborative PhD programme. Prior to this, I did my MSci at the University of Bath studying Natural Sciences and I majored in chemistry and minored in pharmacology.

My PhD project is a collaboration between the medicinal chemistry department and the biopharmaceuticals department. And the overall aim of my PhD is to combine small molecule drugs with a large antibody biologics to generate novel antibody drug conjugates.

As part of my MSc, I completed a one year synthetic chemistry placement at GSK Stevenage doing medicinal chemistry and I knew that I love this so much that I wanted to return to carry on my PhD here with GSK.

Working from home during COVID gave me a lot of time to reflect on my project, browse through the literature, write literature reviews, and so this was quite productive in that respect. I was also given a lot of time to think about my project and therefore design key experiments so that when I returned to the lab, I could turn out results as quickly as possible.

In five years time, I can definitely still see myself in the pharmaceutical industry carrying out drug discovery, as I find this to be extremely fulfilling. Whether this is going to be in small molecule research or antibody biologics or combination of both. I can't see it .So I guess that's something that I'll just have to figure out.