LSU Health Science Center Department of Biochemisty & Molecular Biology  

PhD Biotechnology Track

The PhD Biotechnology Track was launched in fall 2004 in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at LSUHSC Shreveport.  It provides training to PhD students interested in pursuing careers in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. Students receive biotechnology training encompassing both a science curriculum and course work relating to the biotechnology industry and biotechnology entrepreneurship.

The Track utilizes many of the existing courses in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Ph.D. curriculum as degree requirements, but also requires three new interdisciplinary courses and an industry internship. The first course, Biotechnology and the Pharmaceutical Industry , includes an overview of the industry and covers a number of topics relevant to drug discovery.  Some of the topics included are a history of the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, preclinical drug discovery, genomic approaches to drug discovery, automated cell systems, small molecule drug discovery, getting the right target, medicinal chemistry vs. combinatorial chemistry, rational drug design vs. high throughput screening, monoclonal antibody drug discovery, nucleic acids/gene and cell therapy, animal models, ADMA and pharmacokinetics, and clinical development and regulatory issues.  The second course, Biotechnology Entrepreneurship , focuses on development of a business plan and capital formation. Students are required to write a business plan on emerging local technologies and make a presentation of the plan as his/her final exam. In the third course, Methods in Biotechnology , students learn how to use equipment and interpret data from highly specialized analytic equipment routinely used in drug discovery and development. Topics include genomics and proteomics, protein expression technologies, mass spectroscopy, ultracentrifugation, NMR, FACS, hybridomas, gene networks, and cell therapy. Though currently covered in the first two courses in a summary fashion, Legal, Intellectual Property and Regulatory Issues and Clinical Biotechnology, will be expanded and added as separate courses in subsequent years. The capstone course required of third year students is the completion of a six-month Internship at a biotechnology company, a pharmaceutical company or a venture capital firm. A number of local and national biotechnology companies and venture capital firms have agreed to participate in the internship program. The courses and internship together will provide students with a thorough understanding of biotechnology as a business so that they will be better prepared for careers biotechnology entrepreneurs.

Besides LSUHSC faculty, outside biotech corporate lectures have been given by senior management of Burrill & Co., Celgene, Pfizer, Deltagen, Acumen, Centecor, Intradigm, NIH, Bristol Meyers, Axonyx, Nucleonics, Clark & Elbing, Oxford Bioscience, Louisiana Ventures, Invitrogen, Ventria Bioscience, Abbot Labs, and Gene Networks.

The courses are taught by Tony Giordano, PhD, Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He has held senior management positions in five separate biotechnology companies, including the head of research at three companies and the President of two companies. In his role as head of research, Dr. Giordano has mentored over 50 young scientists. Dr. Giordano has raised over $17M in venture funding and over $4M in federal funding over the past five years to support the activities of these companies. He currently serves as a Board member for two of the companies and on the Scientific Advisory Board of a third company.