In the second week, Liya and I will be at Tergus Pharma, a pharmaceutical company that focuses on topical treatments, for our internship experience. Today was a pretty basic day on introductions and background info on the company (a lot of new names and people!). After arriving at 9, we met Duffy McDonald and Wendy Ward, the human resources team who will be helping us throughout this week, as well as Devi Nalamothu, co-owner of Tergus.
Later, we were introduced to Chris and Michael, the people in charge of operations and facilities. Chris gave us a tour of the building and rundown on safety protocols. After the tour, Avinash, the business consultant, gave us a presentation on the business models and procedural steps to the manufacturing/production of various drugs. By the way, the FDA is kinda a big deal and plays a major role in determining the success of any drug/food item in the market. It”s wild how quick they can shut down multiple years worth of data and research! Anyways, we learned that Tergus assists in the development and initial phases of topical treatments. They go by a model of quality by design (QbD), a process that begins with clear, defined objectives and uses sound science as a basis of all experimentation. It was pretty cool!
After lunch, we met a scientist, Shrikanth Manne, who taught us the various ways active ingredients are used in topicals (ointments, creams, gels, etc.). He gave us a demo – making a hydrogel like the ones used in hair gels! Using stirrers to homogenize the wet ingredients (water and glycerin), Shrikanth then added the gelling agent and sodium hydroxide to thicken the substance into the goopy, sticky consistency found in many products in the market today. Although it was short since we didn’t have much time, I thought the process from individual ingredients to the final product was really awesome to see.
