What’s motivating about Dômes Pharma is the supportive and friendly working environment and the resources that management puts at the service of R&D.
I’ve been working as a Research and Development Project Manager at Dômes Pharma for 4 years. After engineering school and a PhD specialising in chemistry, I worked for 2 years as a Project Manager in a laboratory where my mission was to manufacture active molecules. When I joined Dômes Pharma, I was able to satisfy my curiosity to learn more about drugs and broaden my field of action. Today, I work both on maintaining our existing products on the market and on development projects for new drugs and non-drugs.
My role is to be the conductor, as it were, of either a drug development project, in which case it’s essentially a question of meeting deadlines, or maintaining an existing drug on the market, in which case it’s a question of finding a solution quickly (new studies) to a specific problem that could threaten the continuity of supply and delivery of the drug. I work with almost all the departments at Dômes Pharma, from regulatory affairs, which is an undeniable component of my projects, to the supply chain department, via marketing, management control, legal affairs, etc. I really need everyone’s help, but the whole point of my job is to be able to take a step back from the project to reframe everyone’s expectations and get it moving in the right direction and at the right time.
In my job, I spend a lot of time in meetings to get everyone involved in the project moving and united. I communicate a great deal, not only with my colleagues in the various departments, but also with our foreign subsidiaries, external partners, experts, various service providers, and so on. Communication and teamwork are really essential for me in my job.
I learn something new every day, and that’s what I like about it. To be an R&D project manager, you have to be curious, tenacious, enjoy challenges and get out of your comfort zone.
The main challenges in this job are regulatory. You have to keep a constant eye on changing regulations, which are increasingly restrictive, and you have to be able to react quickly. And then there are the difficulties of working with so many people, because when you have so many people to deal with, you extend the schedule and the deadlines, so it’s sometimes difficult to get all the information in time to complete the project.
What’s motivating about Dômes Pharma is the supportive and caring working environment and the resources that management puts into Research & Development. We are really given the means to come up with effective and innovative solutions. It’s also an independent, agile group where decisions are taken quickly, and that’s something we really appreciate.
Regulatory Affairs is a key link in the product development process.
Regulatory Affairs works primarily on the marketing authorisation dossier. Their role is to provide the health authorities with a dossier that ticks all the boxes in order to obtain authorisation to market a drug.
I’m currently in a job that deals more specifically with product information. I work on packaging items (cases, leaflets, etc.), which essentially contain regulatory information. It’s an area that requires a high level of responsiveness. My job is to find solutions to various regulatory problems as quickly as possible, so that our medicines can continue to be available to veterinarians. I also have to proofread a lot of packaging items before checking with the production department that they are ready to go into production. Regulatory Affairs is therefore a key link in the product development process. Without regulatory affairs, medicines don’t reach the market, vets don’t have solutions to offer and animals don’t get treated.
I’m always very committed to my work, because I know that the veterinary surgeon will look at the pack or the package leaflet first, so I take particular care to ensure that these items are in order, legible and well presented. The same goes for the SPC (Summary of Product Characteristics), which is a sort of identity card for the drug, available on the ANSES-ANMV website.
To work in this field, you need to be responsive, rigorous, attentive to needs and enjoy teamwork. You also have to be able to plan your work well so as not to be overwhelmed by requests and be able to give realistic deadlines for implementation.
What’s essential for me in my job is good understanding, mutual support, trust and respect between colleagues so that we can work calmly and move forward together. As for the main difficulty I encounter in this job, it’s the constant changes in regulations that force us to constantly review our work.
What I like about Dômes Pharma is that the Group is both family-owned and independent. In twelve years, I’ve also seen the Group’s management style evolve considerably. Employees are given a much greater say, working groups are more open, we work in an increasingly cross-functional way and it’s easy to talk to people in management. At Dômes Pharma, we are also given the opportunity to combine our professional and private lives, and to develop, because our jobs are changing and we have the chance to grow within the Group.
