MHRA Graduate Scheme

The MHRA Graduate Scheme is a three-year graduate development scheme that provides an exciting opportunity to play a critical role in protecting public health and positively influencing patient safety

Science, Research and Innovation (SR&I)

Help towards the development of medicines and medical devices

The MHRA’s Science, Research and Innovation Group works with innovators, start-ups and pharmaceutical companies to support research and development of medicines and medical devices and advise on their approval for use. The MHRA determines if a healthcare product is safe and effective before giving approval for its use to treat patients and this decision is based on a thorough evaluation of the scientific and medical evidence. The MHRA provides advice to make sure that the evidence generated is strong enough to support regulatory approval.

Help develop medicines in a role in the MHRA Innovation Accelerator

This is the entry point to the Agency for technical queries and you may help the team in understanding the question and then work with experts across the Agency to develop a response. You will both learn the technical challenges faced when developing a new medicine and device, and understand the challenges that a regulator faces when determining if a new product is really safe and gives benefits to a patient.

Identify and work with new sciences in the Horizon Scanning team

You may want to join the Horizon Scanning team. They work on identifying the new science emerging from the research base and help the MHRA decide what in-house scientific expertise it needs to develop to support new therapies that emerge from this area, or you may help win scientific grants to develop Agency expertise.

Work with clinical data in the Clinical Investigations and Trials team

An essential requirement for a new medicine or medical device is to have clinical data that shows its safety and effectiveness in patients. The Clinical Investigations and Trials team reviews applications and changes in trials for every clinical trial (medicine) or clinical investigation (device) in the UK, and works with international regulators to ensure the success of such trials. The work in this team will give you unparalleled experience in this vital step in getting a product to the clinic, and help you grasp the challenges to understanding how patients respond to treatment.

Work with biological medicines and generate public confidence in their use

We have projects on developing standards to support biological tests and medical diagnostics or for determining the quality of vaccines and protein therapeutics. The MHRA also has fundamental research projects to understand the future needs for vaccines and advanced therapies.

Healthcare Quality and Access Group (HQ&A)

Look at the evaluation of medicines, their changes and controls to ensure people have the right treatments in their homes.

This can be from assessing the latest innovations to treat previously untreatable diseases to the medicines to help things like pain, coughs, colds and the medicines most people take for the majority of their lives. There are many types of formulation that need to be understood, from creams, to tablets, and inhaled devices. You will work your way through gaining knowledge of the different aspects of evaluating a medicine, from the stability profile to the bio-equivalence profile.  We will be looking to define improvements and simplification to the pathways of regulation, where new ideas and challenge are welcomed.

Work with applications for licences in our Authorisation Lifecycle division

You could start your time in the Agency in our Authorisation Lifecycle division, in many ways the ‘front door’ to the Agency, where applications for licences are received and validated, but also with some of our specialist teams. For instance those dealing with the law on medicines advertising, resolving issues over products which are on the borderline between Medicines, Medical Devices and other products such as foodstuffs and biocides, and our team dealing with the registration of consumer e-cigarettes.

You might spend a few months with each of these specialist teams before moving into our data quality team where you will start to work on the initial steps following receipt of an application. Once you are more experienced you could work with Scientific Procedure Advisors and later, Scientific Assessors, building assessment skills as you go, including medical writing. Assessors are critical to the work of the Agency, applying their knowledge and skills to consider the evidence applicants provide to us that their medical product works and is safe.

Compliance of medicines and medical devices

You might be interested in being part of the work the Agency does to make sure medicines and medical devices remain compliant throughout the whole period they are on the market with the standards we set, for instance for good manufacturing or laboratory practices.

You would start with a period in our Standards team, understanding how we develop standards and getting involved with our regulatory testing programme in our laboratories in Teddington. This could be followed by a rotation within our medical devices compliance and approved body audit team. They ensure patients have access to safe and effective medical devices by auditing and inspecting those who certify medical devices as well as device manufacturers directly.

Later in your training you will work with medicines Inspectors, which will include being part of inspection teams visiting premises where medicines are manufactured, and you will learn how we deal with non-compliance when we find it. MHRA Inspectors are critical to maintaining patient safety throughout the product lifecycle and our Inspectors are globally recognised for their high standards.

Safety and Surveillance (S&S)

Ensure our medicines and medical devices are safe in our Safety and Surveillance division

Ensuring our medicines and medical devices are safe is at the heart of what everyone in Safety and Surveillance does. Medical products are approved on the basis of rigorous trials but some side effects are so rare that they can only be identified:

• when many more people have taken a medicine
• after a long time on a medicine
• when in association with other medicines, or
• be a result of specific genomic mutation which increases an individual’s susceptibility.

It can even be a result of what we eat or drink and often these types of adverse events cannot be detected in clinical trials. That’s why we have teams of experts, scientists, pharmacists, nurses and doctors critically assessing and evaluating information from healthcare professionals, patients, the public, data from electronic health records and information collected globally. This ensures we can identify a new adverse event as early as possible. We can put in place appropriate measures to reduce the risk to ensure all medicines and the devices are as safe as possible.

Detect and assess indicators of potential harms for medicines and devices in our Adverse Incident and Signal Analysis team

A placement in S&S could mean working in our Adverse Incident and Signal Analysis team, where you will learn how to detect and assess indicators of potential harms for medicines and devices to ensure safety issues and risks to public health are identified and evaluated.

Work with data and analytics in the Scientific Data and Insight group

For those who like working with analytical data, we have thousands of reports every year and we are constantly working to develop new methods to interrogate them. You could do a placement with our Scientific Data and Insight group developing new approaches to expand and interrogate the data sources we use to support our work.

Undertake in-depth clinical, technical and scientific assessments of potential safety issues with medicines and medical devices in our Benefit Risk Evaluation Therapeutic Area Units

These teams undertake in-depth clinical, technical and scientific assessments of potential safety issues with medicines and medical devices to ensure that benefits outweigh the risk and make recommendations to ensure residual risks are mitigated. You would gain experience in conducting assessments and developing papers for presentation to expert advisory committees, engaging with patients to understand their view on a specific safety issue and understand how we balance benefits and risks of medicines and medical devices to ensure they are as safe as possible.

Contribute to studies or support outreach to GPs in our Specialist Real World Data Unit

You could also work in our Specialist Real World Data Unit, contributing to studies or supporting outreach to GPs, or with CPRD’s interventional research team where you could learn how electronic healthcare records can be leveraged for clinical trials.

Whatever you choose, we will make sure it is fulfilling, challenging and provides you with new skill sets to progress into one of the many career paths in the Agency.