GSK

Pharmaceuticals. What comes to mind when you see it? Well, perhaps a couple of drugs. This is the specialty of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the company we visited today. Like all the other visits, we started off with a brief introduction, before we donned on safety lab coats and safety goggles, proceeding to their Technical Development (TD) lab. TD lab, is where most of the "magic" happens. Armed with a team of professional chemists/ pharmacists with an arsenal of advanced lab equipment at their disposal, different tests on drugs are carried out.
Our SRC labs look really small and limited when compared to GSK's. Lots of machines, such as the XRD and SEM, were seen up-close, which was indeed a rare opportunity for secondary school students like us.
We were then introduced to Dr. Philips, who did his doctoral thesis on synthetic organic chemistry. (Really impressed and a little surprised by all the organic reaction mechanisms scribbled in his workplace. He was really friendly and answered some questions on how GSK separates enantiomeric drugs. Apprently they try to keep their reagents enantiopure from the start. but if a racemic mixture results, GSK would use selective precipitation or the use of a chiral HPLC to separate the drugs.
This ties in to the concept of chirality in Organic Chemistry. Since chiral compounds have the same chemical formula, differing only in the "handedness" of the molecule, it has proved to be a challenge for chemists for years on the best way to separate enantiomeric compounds. GSK's adopted method of separation really showed how advanced our technology in tackling conundrums in Chemistry.
Later, we were introduced to the manufacturing plant. Wow. Just wow. It has a Hulk-like (or even larger, though not green) machine that has a height of about 4 storeys. Every floor we visited just showed us a part of the machine, and showed us how effective and efficient GSK is in terms of it's manufacturing. This is, in part, due to its usage of gravitational force which will minimise the use of pumps to manufacture their drugs, thus saving on costs and time.
After the tour, we gathered back in their meeting rooms. There, some questions were answered by the staff of GSK. We were told about the life of workers in GSK. We discovered as with all the other major STEM industries, there was great mobility in terms of career positions. For example, a chemist-by-training may move on to being management, or quality control. Thus, everyone's abilities are maximised and help to advance the quality and the impact which the company has on the rest of the world.