For scientists conducting postdoctoral research, sometimes knowing about the price of sandwiches is as vital as knowing their subject.

Magdia De Jesus is working on the next generation of vaccines and already has an impressive network and behind her.

However, despite the excitement of making scientific advances, immune responses aren’t always the first thing on her mind. There’s the matter of whether she can afford her lunch.

“Postdocs and students know the Monday-through-Friday schedule at Subway restaurants that sell $5 sandwiches. We also know that the Mobil gas station down the street from our institution gives free coffee all day on the first of the month,” says De Jesus, a postdoctoral fellow at the New York State Department of Health’s .

For some postdocs, the financial woes can start as soon as the ink dries on the doctorate and student loan repayments and graduate school costs kick in. To make things harder, postdocs generally lose their subsidized housing at this point, too.

But their plight is set to change. A growing number of postdoc unions are joining research institutions in calls for better pay, and salaries are finally starting to rise.

Power to the postdoc

Despite having the opportunity to gain extra research experience, many postdocs feel frustrated at having to live on a stipend that is currently lower than a PhD graduate’s industry salary and is actually closer to a high school graduate’s income. As a baseline, in 2012, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) postdoctoral stipend for new postdocs was $39,264, increasing to $54,180 for those with seven or more years of experience. Funding levels at universities are broadly similar. PhD graduates going into the pharmaceutical industry, on the other hand, can earn up to $115,000, according to in Cambridge.

It’s no wonder that postdocs have been stepping out of the labs and speaking up, through an increasing number of unions. These organizations can make a real impact on improving pay for postdocs, says Neal Sweeney, president of the , a union that represents more than 6,000 postdocs in California. Sweeney was recently part of a bargaining team that renegotiated the postdoc contract at the .

“Through this negotiation, the average salary has increased by more than $4,300,” says Sweeney. “And since the contract was ratified, we have helped resolve more than 100 individual cases where postdocs were not getting annual raises.”

Member-run organizations, including the have similar aims. Last year, the association gave postdocs a voice when it to call for better funding for health research. The NPA highlighted how postdocs are “routinely exploited” as a result of low wages and inconsistent benefits.

Such meagre wages undermine the value of postdoctoral research. As the has commented, postdocs “have become indispensable to the science and engineering enterprise, performing a substantial portion of the nation’s research in every setting.”

In January this year, in his statement on the changes to the US tax agreement, President Obama acknowledged the importance of research when

In December 2012, the to recommendations from the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) Biomedical Workforce, a working group tasked with developing a model for a sustainable and diverse US biomedical research workforce, by making a commitment to improve the training of postdoctoral researchers. In , NIH director Francis Collins said that he supports a seven per cent increase in the NRSA stipend to $42,000, with an additional four per cent increase for each year of a postdoc’s experience. This recommendation is included in Obama’s proposed . At the time of going to press, the budget has still got to get through Congress, but Sweeney remains optimistic.

Despite the financial wobbles, postdoc research has its perks. There can be more freedom in academic research than in industry, for example.

“Many scientists enjoy working in academia, where there is more flexibility and intellectual latitude in research, and often more opportunities to explore interesting avenues compared with industry,” says Sweeney.

Extra rewards

Postdoctoral research is also a good jumping-off point for a research career in industry. But even postdocs who are studying in academia are managing to find additional benefits. The in Cambridge, Massachusetts, offers , which includes subsidized childcare, contributions to a retirement savings plan, and access to an active postdoc association.

The work of postdoc associations has already led to improvements in training, pay, benefits and support from supervisors and mentors. These improvements are making an impact on how postdocs feel about their institutions. According to to find the best places to work as a postdoc, the number of scientists rating their institutions as excellent increased from 20.5 per cent in 2006 to 31.5 per cent in 2013. Less than a fifth say that the institutions where they are training are poor or fair; this has dropped from around a quarter in 2006.

Until the proposed salary changes take effect, part-time, flexible work, such as freelance writing, editing, proofreading and peer reviewing, can provide extra sources of income. The experience can also add sparkle to a CV.

Even if the finances run dry, many institutions have emergency hardship funds, such as those at , New York and , California.

The postdoc route can be a long and challenging one but the prospect of better pay has led many to feel optimistic.

“Things are improving,” says De Jesus. “The NIH’s promised salary increase in 2014 will make the time as a postdoc easier financially, and more fun.”

As the standard of living for postdocs improves, balancing a demanding job with basic financial needs will no longer be such a struggle. That means fewer sleepless nights about cheap sandwiches.

You could call it something of a phenomenon. Against all odds, the pharmaceutical industry is undergoing a revival. In 2012, the number of , the highest figure in 16 years. After a tough few years for the industry, things are now looking up as companies get better at moving drugs from the lab bench to the patient’s bedside. Not only will this help to improve care, it will create new opportunities for people wanting to work in the industry.

Getting to this point has not been easy and the industry has travelled a bumpy road. Drug approvals from the FDA fell to just 21 in 2010 and success rates dropped, with . On top of all this, development costs for a single drug can reach as much as $11 billion.

But there are many reasons to be more positive. The US pharma industry is huge and still growing. In 2011 it was , according to healthcare information provider IMS, accounting for 36 per cent of the total of the global pharma industry. It is predicted to rise to around $370–$390 billion by 2015. Although it is too soon to judge whether this is the beginning of a trend, FDA approvals in 2012 were nine higher than the 2011 figure, representing a 33 per cent increase on the average of the past two decades.

Much of this improvement has stemmed from collaborations between academia and industry: academia for the basic science and industry for the expertise in clinical development and marketing.

To accelerate the translation of basic biomedical research to innovative new medicines, near San Diego. The not-for-profit will select innovative projects from academic researchers and take them through the development cycle. Merck will have the first pick of any interesting potential drugs coming out of the research. The institute, which was founded in early 2012, could grow to 150 employees, providing jobs in translational medicine. Moves like this will create opportunities for people to gain experience in both arenas.

Start-ups are generally more flexible than bigger companies, and can put new technologies to work more quickly, but creating a new company is expensive. Established pharma companies are providing support by creating bioincubators – clusters of small labs with shared infrastructure – that give new and emerging companies a cost-effective and low-risk start. , for example, which is backed by Janssen Research & Development in La Jolla, California, supports innovative start-ups working in areas of unmet medical need by allowing these companies access to Janssen’s specialist research facilities. This means that start-ups can invest more of their money into research and progressing the science instead of spending money on infrastructure and day-to-day operations.

The drive to develop new medicines more quickly and cheaply has led the pharma industry to make use of “fail fast” models. Such methods of practice involve deciding whether to stop or continue the development of drugs much earlier in the process, using animal models and biomarkers as indicators of early success.

Drug trials can also progress more quickly when developers multitask. An increasing number of companies have started recruiting volunteers for clinical trials while they are still in the process of developing the drug itself. “It is possible to have cohorts ready for drug testing even before the lead molecule is selected,” says , president and CEO at Genetic Alliance, a health advocacy organisation based in Washington, DC.

Another way to get medicines to the market faster and at lower risk is to repurpose existing drugs for other diseases. According to a Thomson Reuters report, between 2001 and 2010, .

Research centres are already getting in on the act. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), for example, has created a pilot programme to . During 2012, to the programme. These drugs had gone through preclinical and phase I trials, but had been unsuccessful, or not pursued for business reasons. Pharmaceutical company is carrying out its own in-house programme of repurposing drugs and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to look at practical uses for the drugs.

Mind the skills gap

Bridging the gap between basic science and clinical medicine will require a new breed of scientists. “The number of people in academia and industry with the skills and

experience to integrate preclinical and clinical research has fallen to a critical point,” says , a pharmacologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia. “Few people can span this divide.”

Academia and industry are working to help equip the new generation of clinicians, scientists and academics. The NIH’s programme is funding translational centres such as the in New York. The CTSC offers researchers practical advice, support and access to research funding.

“The CTSA programme can help by investing in relevant infrastructure but also in training interdisciplinary scientists relevant to translational medicine and therapeutics,” says FitzGerald.

Further training schemes are offered by the and the in Baltimore, among others.

The industry has made some significant changes, but there are likely to be even more opportunities in the future as pharma researchers, academics and physicians work more closely together.

“These industry changes would encourage collaborations between big pharma, academia, and small biotechs,” says , a pharmacologist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill. “They would share information on early-stage studies, perhaps even through to human proof of concept.”

For such collaboration to work, both parties need to establish who owns the rights to information and patents. But a pharma sector that features collaboration as a matter of course could speed up research and provide more opportunities for researchers to work in cross-disciplinary teams, both in industry and academia.