During the Easter Term students undertake a short internship, carrying out individual research with a commercial or business dimension. Students may elect to work within multinational companies, medium to small enterprises or young start-ups to gain experience of a particular business culture and operational model. In some cases students may elect to work with service providers such as accounting, legal or IP practices and in so doing gain exposure to the extensive network of specialist advisors that support the life science sector.
Normally students spend 6-8 weeks with a company and are encouraged to put into practise the lessons learnt from the academic aspects of the programme as well as to demonstrate original research and analysis. The selected area of work will address a defined research question and afford the opportunity to collect information and data, leading to an analysis of the findings and recommendations for action to the host company. The work is written up in a dissertation and the findings presented at a Symposium held at the end of the year.
The dissertation is an important component of programme assessment and contributes 30% of the total marks.
Examples of topics covered include:
- Second generation biofuels
- Manufacturing competitiveness: Future of pharmaceutical manufacturing in the UK
- Developing transparency in private equity investment in biotech
- Patenting genes, biotech processes, and products
- Innovative monoclonal antibody cancer therapeutics in development
- An analysis of the potential market for a dengue vaccine
- Comparison of exit strategies for European venture-backed biotechnology companies
- Drug distribution channels in Europe
- Current opportunities for industrial collaborations in biotechnology between the UK and India
- Impact of share structure on team motivation in private biotechnology companies
- Opportunities in biopharmaceuticals and biotechnology in Brazil
- Impact of outsourcing within a large biotechnology company
- Pharmaceutical marketing in Russia - measuring ROI and sales force effectiveness for GSK
- Healthcare opportunites in emerging economies
- Strategies for exploiting medical device innovation
- The potential technological applications, market opportunities and strategies for Lumora in the agricultural market
- Marketing and distribution strategy for Diagnovis Ltd - tackling the challenge of product and service delivery in the global health sector
- Analysis of incentives for overseas biotech manufacturing
- Therapeutic Antibodies – a commercial strategy paper prepared for Acambis
- An investment strategy for Atlas Venture focusing on Scandinavian life science start-up companies
- Risk assessment for development of combinations of diagnostics with therapies – a business model to demonstrate value to the pharmaceutical industry
- Assessment of potential markets for HIV treatment monitoring diagnostics in resource-limited settings
- How can the UK's strengths in stem cell research be translated into commercial opportunities in a global market?
- The expansion of differential pricing for pharmaceuticals
- Identifying investment opportunities in the cardiovascular medical device market