NYMC and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Collaborate on Drug Development Elective

“We are thrilled at this opportunity to collaborate with Regeneron,” said Pamela Ludmer, M.D., M.S., associate dean for curriculum development. “Our former dean, Dr. Jerry Nadler, had developed a relationship with Boaz Hirshberg, M.D., senior vice president and general medicine therapeutic area head at Regeneron, and from our first meeting, Dr. Hirshberg’s and his team’s passion to share their knowledge and encourage the next generation of physicians to consider drug development as a career path was clear. Our goal was to develop an innovative program that would both excite and inspire our students to engage more deeply in the drug development process, from discovery, to clinical application, to pharmacovigilance, and ethical considerations. This program will enable our medical students to have a greater understanding of and appreciation for the complexity and cost of developing novel drug therapies.”  

“Working together with Dr. Nadler and Dr. Ludmer to establish a collaboration between NYMC and Regeneron, centered on education and experiential learning, will afford tremendous benefit to future physicians,” said Dr. Hirshberg. “Providing medical students with both knowledge and real-world experience and informing them on career paths in drug development – either as future academic physicians or research physicians working in the pharmaceutical industry – provides a unique educational opportunity. The AOC aligns with Regeneron’s ethos of doing well by doing good and enables our drug development experts to share their knowledge and experience with NYMC medical students. We are thrilled to partner with NYMC and their exceptionally talented medical students.” 

The AOC begins with a foundational course offered during the summer before the second year of medical school, encompassing a wide range of topics from toxicology, pharmacokinetics and bioanalysis to clinical pharmacology in drug development, regulatory and legal aspects of drug development and medical affairs and manufacturing. Interactions continue throughout the second and third years of medical school as students continue to learn about the process of drug development and begin to focus on an area of interest. The AOC culminates with students immersed at Regeneron for three months in their fourth year, when they are paired with a Regeneron global program head or medical director as a mentor and complete a longitudinal research project at Regeneron. A final capstone project consists of a written development plan for a novel molecule from Phase 1 to clinical implementation.