Dexter's Laboratory - My journey in pharmacology.

Like many students with the slightest affinity for science, I initially wanted to study medicine and become a doctor. Imagine my surprise at the end of Year 13 when I realised that I flinched every time someone sneezed, and disliked hospital environments - which would not be ideal for a medical career. As it turned out, I did not like being around sick people; my mum insists she could have told me this for free if I had asked sooner.

Now, while I believe that figuring out what you don’t want to do is just as important as figuring out what you do want to do, this life changing epiphany happened at a pretty inconvenient time. It now meant that 18-year-old Dexter had to start his gap year questioning what he wanted his next fifty-odd working years to look like. No pressure…

From my A levels, I knew I enjoyed chemistry and biology. Not enough to study either separately, but enough to want something that married the two disciplines. A late-night Google search led me to a degree in Pharmacology and Drug Discovery being offered at the University of East Anglia. I didn’t know it then, but that moment would spark what became the most challenging yet fulfilling four years of my life. In all honesty I didn’t really understand what a pharmacologist was, but from what I gathered, they helped discover and develop medicines. All I knew is that they were trying to get rid of illnesses, and if that meant fewer sick people for me to be around then that was a cause I was willing to take part in!

From the start, one of the challenges I noticed was the lack of engaging and accessible content about the insights of a junior pharmacologist. Unlike medicine, pharmacy or biochemistry, pharmacology felt like an unknown career path.

The lack of social media discussion about the course and career options left myself and my peers feeling uncertain about our decision to pursue it. I feared I might  wake up one day and realise I had chosen the wrong course, and gone into debt for it. That was until I attended Professor Anja Müller's lectures in Cellular Pharmacology.

I remember her explaining how first-generation antihistamines cause drowsiness due to their ability to cross the blood brain barrier, making them unsuitable for night shift workers in high-risk jobs. She further discussed the pharmacokinetics, especially how the challenges with the duration of action were resolved with the development of second generation antihistamines, leading to the non-drowsy one-a-day tablets which are helpful for my hay fever. I had been taking antihistamines for years and while I noticed the differences in side effects and dosing, I never thought to ask why they existed.

That’s when I understood the role of the pharmacologist. They ask the questions no one else does, so that the answers are built into the medicine before it reaches the patient. All doubts went at that moment. The science made sense, it was purposeful, practical, and fascinating. For the first time, I saw where my love of biology and chemistry could lead to in the real world.

Since then, I’ve had many similar moments that solidified my reasons for staying in the course, but my favourite came in my third year - during my final-year research project supervised by Professor A. Ganesan. I worked on cultivating fungi in the search for novel metabolites with potential drug-like properties. Prior to this – during the summer before my third year – I began considering STEM content creation more seriously. My aim was to provide an answer to the question I had asked myself at the start: “Where is all the relatable pharmacology social media content?”. 

My project therefore gave me a chance to not only focus on hands-on lab work but to also share the kind of science pharmacology students can take part in. Combining STEM content creation and my love for the lab gave rise to my short series, Day in the Lab with Dexter, which featured recaps of the experiments and techniques I was using during my research.

I didn’t really expect many people to take interest, so I was surprised when the series started gaining traction on LinkedIn. Even more surprising was that it reached not just students, but professionals later in their careers. As someone who struggles with imposter syndrome, this helped me realise my content filled a gap for anyone passionate about the science driving pharmaceutical innovation.

It was a defining moment that showed me I could contribute to science not just through research, but by making it more visible, accessible, and engaging for others.

Around this time, I also began attending science conferences where I met other student pharmacologists. Given how small pharmacology cohorts tend to be, it was hard to imagine that there were many of us out there - let alone that our paths might cross.

What stood out was how similar our experiences were. Sure, we all shared a passion for pharmacology, but we also experienced similar feelings of being overlooked. We were underrepresented in student support, never the main target for career events, and often missed out on opportunities compared to those in larger life sciences courses. From Reading to Cardiff to Northampton, everyone echoed the same issues.

We were having the same scattered conversations with no central space to connect or advocate for change. I never saw myself as the one to create that space. However, what I’ve begun to learn is that life doesn’t care what you see yourself doing initially - it always has a way of pushing you into the unexpected.

So, three days after attending Pharmacology 2024, I launched the Student Pharmacologist Network, the first student association for pharmacology students in the UK. Since then, we have welcomed over 270 members from across England, Scotland, and Wales.

We now have a committee of ten passionate students, secured £4,500 in scholarships for eight members to attend employability training through Wenite, and held our first careers webinar featuring pharmacology graduates in a range of industries to support students exploring what life after university could look like. What started as a passing thought has become a national student community and we are just getting started.
 

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