<p>Are there MDs who do research on pharmacokinetics or on projects that are more chemistry-oriented?</p>
<p>I ask this because I find myself more interested in the chemistry side of things than on the biological side of things.</p>
<p>Ookla,</p>
<p>On Chem side of things, you could look into either Medicinal Chemistry or Organic chemistry or Analytical chemistry. These areas could delve into synthesis of new drugs (based on SAR) or analysis, purification of compounds of interest.</p>
<p>They all have applications in Drug Research. Pharmacokinetics (PK) utilizes many of the analytical methodologies such as HPLC, GC-MS, MS-MS etc to isolate, evaluate, identify, and quantitate different components in plasma or urine. These components are parent drug and metabolites. However, PK is an integral branch of Pharmacology as PK literally deals with ADME principles (absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion). Therefore, you can not master PK without a heavy Biological/pharmacological leaning.</p>
<p>Yes. There are MDs working on pharmacological aspects of drugs but it’s really Pharmacologists (like me) who assist MDs in this research.</p>
<p>Hope this helps.</p>
<p>Thanks Pharmagal for your reply. I am graduating soon and need to decide on a career.</p>
<p>What was your career path? Do you hold a PharmD/PhD?</p>
<p>If so, was it hard to get both degrees?</p>