This week, we’ll be interning at Tergus Pharma, a company focusing on the development of topical treatments. After arriving, we sat down with Duffy McDonald and Wendy Ward from the Human Resources Department; they helped introduce us to Tergus by providing some background on the history of the company as well as on their own journeys to their current positions. Then, we went on a tour of all the labs and offices in the building with Chris and Michael, who work with operations and facilities; a few of the labs included equipment that we also encountered last week at Integrated Pain Solutions, including HPLC and mass spectrometers. Afterwards, we were given a presentation by Avinash, who works on the business side of the company. We learned about the drug development cycle, from discovery and development to FDA post-market safety monitoring, along with exploring the different aspects of testing treatments during the development stage.
We will be learning more about these steps of drug development in chronological order throughout this week. This afternoon, Srikanth, one of the scientists, brought us to the labs to teach us about formulation. He first demonstrated how to create a hydrogel by combining water, sorbitol, sodium hydroxide as a neutralizer, glycerin, and the gelling agent carbopol 980 in a small mechanical stirrer. While waiting for the ingredients to mix together, he also discussed creating creams and testing mixtures with HPLC, microscopes, texture analyzers, viscometers, pH meters and rheometers. Altogether, we covered a lot of information today, and I’m looking forward to the week to come!
