2016 British Journal of Pharmacology Early Career Researcher Prize

Each year the Society awards an annual prize of £1,000 for the best paper published by an early career researcher in an issue of the British Journal of Pharmacology (BJP) during the previous 12 months. The goal of the BJP Early Career Researcher Prize is to recognise outstanding work by young pharmacology investigators and to encourage them to submit their most exciting pharmacological work to BJP.

In 2016 the prize went to Nicolas Monjotin for his paper ‘F16357, a novel protease-activated receptor 1 antagonist, improves urodynamic parameters in a rat model of interstitial cystitis’. Six months on, we caught up with Nicolas to find out a bit about the impact of winning the prize, and what he’s up to now.

What was the main discovery from your paper?

In this paper, we demonstrate the presence of Protease Activated Receptor-1 (PAR-1) in the rat bladder and its involvement in bladder function and sensation. The local administration of the novel selective PAR1 antagonist F16357 elicits robust and durable effects on bladder contractility, urodynamics and bladder pain sensation. Hence, F16357 could represent an interesting candidate for Interstitial Cystitis/Bladder Pain Syndrome (IC/BPS) treatment because it improves most of the pathological features, namely, pelvic pain, inflammation and detrusor dysfunction.

Where do you work now and how did you get there?

Since 2016 I have been Head of Scientific Outsourcing at the pharmaceutical company Pierre Fabre Medicament in Toulouse, France. I joined Pierre Fabre in 2008 as a technician and have worked my way up through various roles in the years since. I now coordinate the strategy of all of our scientific experiments, which are steadily increasing as a proportion of Pierre Fabre’s total business. There are three main elements to my role:

• As Head of Scientific Outsourcing, I functionally manage a team of 30 people made up of scientists and colleagues working in support services (intellectual property, legal, project management, purchasing etc).
• As Outsourcing Manager, I facilitate the interaction between Pierre Fabre Scientists and contract research organisations (CROs). I challenge the scientific needs, I determine the added value in outsourcing, and I help to design the best experimental procedure and to initiate the studies.
• As a Pharmacologist, I design and manage pharmacological experiments for the external evaluation of compounds.

Before joining Pierre Fabre I spent three years at UROSPHERE, a Toulouse-based CRO specialising in preclinical urogenital, gastro-intestinal and oncological pharmacology studies.

How did it feel to win the prize? How has winning it helped you?

When I received the email to tell me that I had won the Early Career Researcher Prize, I called my thesis supervisor, Nathalie Vergnolle, to ask her if it was true or if it was a spam email! I must confess that until then I had not heard of the prize, but since winning it I have been pleasantly surprised to see how well recognised it is within the pharmacology community. After the news was announced, I received congratulations from lots of scientists I didn’t even know, which has been really gratifying. Winning the award has been a great way to raise the visibility and profile of my research in a way that would not have happened otherwise.

Winning the prize also boosted my profile within my company, as they decided to communicate the news to all staff and in our internal magazine. I was even congratulated by our Research and Development Director. The company recognises that the prestige of being associated with the BJP in this way is good for its own reputation, not just mine personally!

What are your plans for the future?

For the near future, I want to follow my mission to set up and coordinate our scientific outsourcing process because it is a real education to see how a large company like Pierre Fabre works. I work with a fabulous team which is dedicated to improving our scientific efficiency and to helping all our scientists to perform experiments in CROs to the same standards we achieve internally. This new experience is very interesting but after I have fulfilled this mission, I would like to move to a more scientific one.

Regarding F16357, its development will continue in a collaboration with a biotech firm and I hope to see this compound become a medicament in the coming years because it could really improve the pathological features of IC/BPS.

Do you have any advice for young researchers?

Be proud of what you do. A lab is a very creative place – you must always recognise the creativity in what you do, and take pride in that.

And finally, work in a team, because it is the only way to achieve “impossible” things. I would like to thank everyone in my own extraordinary team – I could not have won this prize without you!

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