Pharmaceutical medicine and academic clinical pharmacology: a convergent pathway?

The pharmaceutical physician now has an important role in the clinical development of new medicines. It requires special training in research methods as well as clinical and managerial skills. This evolution of the industry-based research physician was a response to the dramatic increase in truly innovative medicines discovered by the pharmaceutical industry and to the changing scientific, medical and regulatory standards required in order to obtain a product licence for them. In the field of clinical pharmacology, the industrybased physician performs early-phase studies on healthy volunteers in well-equipped units. In academic clinical pharmacology, several other strands of research have characterised the discipline, but some may not attract novice clinical investigators, who want to be involved in new drug research. In experimental medicine, performed previously and exclusively by university- and hospital-based clinical investigators, there is a now mutual interface, where industry can contribute expertise, particularly in organising efficiently supervised studies, and the clinicians can offer thoroughly investigated patients and research staff with advanced techniques and skills. Interchange of medical staff between industry and clinical units has begun, through joint training programmes, but there are both old and new barriers to shared career paths, such as distinct specialist accreditation, where one has clinical responsibility and the other not.