Samantha Brew, PhD
Graduation Year: 2021
Advisor: Wang, Chyung-Ru
Current Position: Senior Manager, RA Global Regulatory Strategy (Immunology), US/CAN, AbbVie
Samantha (Genardi) Brew grew up on the East coast, spending early childhood in New Jersey, high school in New Hampshire and college in Boston at Northeastern University. Samantha came to the DGP in 2014 and worked with Dr. Chyung-Ru Wang in the Department of Microbiology-Immunology.
What made you want to go to graduate school?
Northeastern has a co-op program where you work 6 months full time at a company after sophomore year, then alternate between work and classes. I worked at a pharma company and my mentors really encouraged graduate school. I was working in immunology, where there was a lot of excitement around new drugs and I knew having a PhD in immunology would be highly marketable.
What brought you to Northwestern and the DGP?
I was looking for grad programs with affiliation with hospitals for access to patient samples, so the affiliation of the DGP with Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Lurie Children’s Hospital was appealing. I also liked the urban setting and culture of Chicago.
What did you study in graduate school?
I studied a subset of T cells, type II natural killer T cells, and their role in MRSA bacterial infection. We were interested in their role in disease pathogenesis and showed that removing them worsens disease in mice. We were also able to get whole blood from patients in the hospital with MRSA and looked at changes in disease associated with type II NKT cells, which were expanded in MRSA infection.
Did you do a postdoc?
No, I went straight into industry. My first job at Cour Pharmaceuticals; I was there about 4 years. I started off in a senior scientist/program manager role. I did some traditional mouse experiments and was also involved in writing investigational new drug applications and other new roles. The program manager role led to my current position in regulatory affairs at AbbVie, where I’ve been for 1.5 years.
Tell me more about your current position. Are you still doing research?
I’m not currently doing research. I’m currently the Senior Manager, RA Global Regulatory Strategy (Immunology) at AbbVie. I interact with FDA regulators, and work on clinical study plans and development plans for drug programs. This can mean working on applications to study drugs in patients, managing application preparation with subject matter experts, working with FDA on designing, submitting and approving study protocols, and submitting applications to get new drugs on the market.
How did Northwestern prepare you for your current career?
The skills that were important for my first job were my immunology expertise; experimental design (even though I was not performing the experiments as much); soft skills like translating scientific information for a lay audience; organizational skills like time management/multitasking. I attended a lot of networking events. I also participated in the KIICs program, which was a good insight into patient side of clinical research.
What is the most rewarding part of your job?
Getting a drug approved and on-market. It is really cool to see whether the drug you are working on is working in patients.
What is the most challenging part of your job?
A lot of coordination with different functional areas and the logistics of doing that. You are also trying to read the tea leaves about what the FDA is going to say and how you can respond to them.
What advice would you give to current students interested in pursuing a similar career?
I didn’t even know that regulatory affairs was a career when I was a grad student. I recommend a lot of networking and talking to people to see what’s out there. Opportunities have expanded even since my time in DGP, so networking inside and outside of Northwestern.
Any final advice for students?
Be open to new opportunities. If you told me 5 years ago, I’d be doing this, I wouldn’t even have known what it was.