Online Master of Pharmaceutical Bioengineering prepares working professionals to drive drug discovery, development | UW Bioengineering

ONLINE MASTER OF PHARMACEUTICALBIOENGINEERING PREPARES WORKINGPROFESSIONALS TO DRIVE DRUGDISCOVERY, DEVELOPMENT

To provide even more flexibility for working students worldwide,

UW BioE’s Master of Pharmaceutical Bioengineering (PharBE)

degree is now offered entirely online. Designed for working

professionals, the part-time program can be completed in less

than two years.

Registration for Fall 2017 is now open, with deadlines of May 10

for priority applications and Sept. 1 on a space-available basis.

Previous Next Sign up for UW

Bioengineering

eNews

News

Featured

Publications

Events

BIOE eNews

Graduate Student

Exams

Seminars

Bioengineering

Distinguished

Lecturer Series

Bioengineering

Department

Seminars

Health

Innovators

Collaborative

!!

ONLINE MASTER OF

PHARMACEUTICAL

BIOENGINEERING PREPARES

Home / Alumni, BIOE eNews, Karen Thickman, News,

Patrick Stayton, Research, Students /

Online Master of Pharmaceutical Bioengineering

prepares working professionals to drive drug discovery,

development

! "

INVENTING THE FUTURE OF MEDICINESearch ... #

Contact / Jobs / News & Events / Seminars /ABET Accreditation / Resources /

$

Online Master of Pharmaceutical Bioengineering prepares working ... http://depts.washington.edu/bioe/online-master-of-pharmaceutical-b...

1 of 7 1/30/17, 3:22 PM

Karen Thickman, lecturer,

UW Bioengineering

careers or move into another aspect of the biotech industry. “Our

students gain additional skills for decision making and designing

drugs, to help them be the lead of a scientific component,” says

program co-director Karen Thickman, full-time lecturer in

Bioengineering.

“Our graduates have a better and

deeper understanding of the

entire pharmaceutical market and

the process by which

pharmaceuticals are developed

and what’s needed at the various

steps to decide if a drug is a viable

pharmaceutical,” Thickman says.

“They are also better able to

communicate with management

about why a drug is scientifically

valid.”

Co-directed by Edward Kelley, UW associate professor of

pharmaceutics, who managed the Preclinical Bioanalytics group

at Targeted Genetics Corporation before joining the faculty at

UW; Patrick Stayton, Distinguished Career Professor of

Bioengineering, who has developed therapies and co-founded

two companies to move them into market; and Thickman, the

program gives students direct access to faculty who have

first-hand experiences with the drug development process, both

in academia and industry.

Students will complete a core curriculum in Basic Biosciences,

choose one of two advanced track options – Drug Discovery and

Design or Translational Pharmaceutics – and take six credits of

Departmental Seminars, which feature industry speakers from

diverse biotech areas. Students will also complete a capstone

project, featuring a life-cycle plan of a drug.

CCOONNVVEENNIIEENNCCEE FFOORR BBUUSSYY SSCCHHEEDDUULLEESS

One reason for putting the program fully online is the flux in

people and even companies moving around, Thickman says.

People can maintain the program regardless of where they live.

ENEWS?

Sign up for our quarterly

email newsletter. With

each issue, you'll learn

how we're inventing the

future of medicine.

Sign up now!

RECENT POSTS

Humans of UW

Bioengineering:

Bill Koski

Bioengineers

with UW’s ISCRM

lead educational

outreach event at

Mill Creek Middle

School

Deok-Ho Kim

receives $1.7M

NIH R01 to

develop tissue

engineered

human

neuromuscular

junctions for

modeling axonal

neuropathy

Nonprofit

“DIYbio” lab

SoundBio

featured by

Geekwire

ACADEMIC PROGRAMS ! ADMISSIONS ! OUTREACH ! STUDENT LIFE !

RESEARCH ! INNOVATION ! FACULTY AND STAFF ! ENVIRONMENT ! #


2 of 7 1/30/17, 3:22 PM

Jennifer Pageler, PharBE ’12,

says she applies the full

range of knowledge from her

degree to her consulting

career.

The program may also be attractive to international students,

particularly in China and Korea, whose perspective will be useful

to American students trying to understand the pharma industry

as it becomes increasingly global, Thickman says.

Jennifer Pageler, PharBE ’12, who was part of the inaugural

PharBE class, recalls, “What was so excellent about the course

was the ability to interact with your peers and professors in live

sessions – and the ability to participate in those sessions from a

remote location. As an Amgen IT director, I needed to travel on a

regular basis to non-Seattle sites, and the ability to get into my

course and participate from a remote location, whether that be

an airport or a hotel, was really compelling.”

SSEEEEIINNGG FFRROOMM TTHHEE ““OOTTHHEERR SSIIDDEE OOFF TTHHEELLEENNSS””

In addition to recorded and live online classes, students also

interact with each other through team projects that promote

communication and colleague-building skills.

The program draws a broad mix

of students, from those right out

of undergraduate programs to

bench scientists, lawyers and

those with MBAs. Their diverse

experiences create a rich

learning environment, and

students are encouraged to

share insights from their daily

work, from the manufacturing

process to challenges in animal

studies and experiments with

drug candidates.

The faculty also come from

diverse backgrounds, and many

are upper-level professionals

who have been in the

pharmaceutical field for 15 years, with hands-on knowledge and

experience in each step of developing and taking a drug from

concept to the long-term market.




3 of 7 1/30/17, 3:22 PM

Will Brown, PharBE ’11,

says his degree set him

apart from the

competition and is useful

to him every day in his

new role at Juno

Therapeutics.

exposure is very difficult to find. Everyone is increasingly

specialized, and once you’re in a specialized academic program

or job it’s very hard to find opportunities to see from the other

side of the lens.”

RREELLEEVVAANNTT CCOONNTTEENNTT TTHHAATT OOPPEENNSS DDOOOORRSS

During the program, Pageler led information technology efforts

in scientific data management at Amgen. “It was excellent

because I found that the content that was taught each evening

was content that I could put into practice directly in my job the

next day,” she says.

Today she is an IT consultant for the biotech industry and, she

says, “This particular degree has definitely opened doors for me.”

“The master’s course gave me an overview of the pharmaceutical

development life cycle: from drug discovery through commercial

manufacturing and post-marketing commitments,” Pageler says.

“I am able to apply that full range of knowledge to my consulting

career. As a consultant you never know what part of the industry

you’re going to be placed in; having that breadth of exposure and

being able to speak the language across the value chain has

allowed me to be more successful in my work.”

When Will Brown, PharBE ’11,

another member of the first cohort,

started the program, he was

working at a company where there

were a lot of people at his level,

with the same education and

experience. “I chose the program as

a way to distinguish myself out of

the pack, so to speak,” he says.

“It opened up more than just

opportunities within my field, it

opened up career opportunities

that I hadn’t even considered,” adds

Brown. “For example, once I got the

master’s degree, I was invited to

teach at the community college




4 of 7 1/30/17, 3:22 PM

Roberta Wong, affiliate

assistant professor of

Bioengineering, helps her

biomarkers, working to find ways to measure whether or not

their therapeutics are working, and says his degree is useful to

him on a daily basis.

“I really liked that the program looked at the entire drug

development process,” Brown says. “As a result, I have a much

better understanding of production, manufacturing and FDA

requirements. Now, working in translational biology, we’re taking

things from a discovery platform and moving it into clinical

development, so it’s been a really good background to help me

bridge those two worlds.”

DDRRUUGG DDEEVVEELLOOPPMMEENNTT IINN TTHHEE BBUUSSIINNEESSSSCCOONNTTEEXXTT

Roberta Wong, affiliate assistant professor of Bioengineering,

teaches the capstone course that requires each student to

produce a strategy document for a drug that is currently in Phase

II development. Students will develop their own Phase III human

trial along with a strategic plan for publishing studies, launching

the drug and marketing it throughout its patent life.

Wong says most of her students come from a laboratory-based

background, working at a stage before drugs are tested in

humans. She provides an understanding of what happens when

drugs are tested in people, and how the work they’re doing in the

lab impacts human trials.

“I also try to explain to them how

business decisions could affect

moving a drug product forward

or not,” says Wong, a

Seattle-based pharmaceutical

consultant who previously was

senior project manager at

Amgen, director of corporate

planning at Abraxis Bioscience,

and director of clinical research

at Agensys.

This year Wong is adding a health

economics component to her




5 of 7 1/30/17, 3:22 PM

average. “One of the most important questions arising in the last

5-10 years is: Is it worth the cost to spend that much money for

the drug, testing and monitoring, and what do you get out of

that?” Wong says. “Do you get a better quality of life? Do you

extend life, as in the case of cancer or some other

life-threatening illness like hepatitis? And what is that worth –

does it cost $100,000 to get four more months of life, or is it a

$100,000 investment and we get 20 more years of life and save

10 hospitalizations and their potential complications?”

In addition to a better understanding of how drugs are

developed, graduates will better understand how diseases are

managed and how decisions are made in selecting which drugs

are used and not used, Wong says.

“This course is very well-suited for anybody who’s in a position

where they want to advance their careers and get more exposure

beyond the niche that they are serving in today,” says Pageler,

the program alumna. “For the laboratory analysts who were my

counterparts in the course, it gave them the ability to see the

broader picture of what the upstream and downstream effects of

their work were. It offers one of the very few opportunities to

step back and look at the entire life cycle of how the biotech

industry works.”

Details about the program and answers to frequently asked

questions are available on the UW PharBE website.

By Lia Unrau | December 13th, 2016

SHARE THIS STORY,CHOOSE YOUR PLATFORM!

% & ' () * + ,

-




6 of 7 1/30/17, 3:22 PM

QUICKLINKS

ABET Accreditation

Faculty, Postdoc and

Staff Jobs

About

News and Events

Make a Gift to UW

Bioengineering

Resources

Bioengineering

Department Seminars

Translational

Research Partnership

Program

UW Home

UW College of

Engineering

UW School of

Medicine

BioEngage – UW

Bioengineering

Industry Engagement

MyBioE

My UW

% .

'

CONTACT UW

BIOENGINEERING

Department of

Bioengineering

University of

Washington

Box 355061

Seattle, WA

98195-5061

(206) 685-2000

Student and general

inquiries contact form

Copyright 2015 University of Washington - Seattle - Department of Bioengineering | All Rights Reserved | Privacy

| Terms




7 of 7 1/30/17, 3:22 PM

Documents

Online Master of Pharmaceutical Bioengineering prepares working professionals to drive drug discovery, development | UW Bioengineering