NEEDED: Pharmacist

PURPOSE: Pharmacist for the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute on Aging (NIA) Pharmacy. The purpose of this requirement is to continue the services of a licensed Pharmacist to fill in for the NIA Pharmacist and to oversee all aspects of pharmacy activity required to support the NIA Clinical Unit.

LOCATION: located within the Research Pharmacy Unit of the Diabetes Section of the Clinical Research Core (CRC) within the National Institute on Aging's Clinical Unit (Bethesda, MD 20892).

SCHEDULE: PRN (As Needed)

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Must possess a pharmacist license in good standing with the Maryland Board of Pharmacy.
• Must possess extensive professional experience in the practice of pharmacy in the following pharmacy environments: hospital, IV infusion, and clinical pharmacy.
• Must possess in-depth knowledge and understanding of the processes and requirements involved in clinical investigations, clinical trials methodology, quality assurance issues, clinical trials design, and pharmacy recordkeeping. Must be able to impart this knowledge to the clinical staff in NIA.
• Must have previous experience in various pharmacy environments including sterile compounding, non-sterile compounding and in-patient hospital including IV experience.
• Shall provide a Pharmacist that possesses fluency in the following:
• Must have experience with regulatory processes
• Must be willing to research and learn new concepts in the process of problem solving or assisting colleagues on the unit
• Must be comfortable with different computer systems and applications
• Must be resourceful in determining formulations and procedures and know where to go with inquiries that they cannot answer
• Must have familiarity with formulations and their corresponding pharmacy calculations such as those involved in Total Parenteral Nutrition and chemotherapy preparations.

JOB DUTIES:

• This position is located within the Research Pharmacy Unit of the Diabetes Section of the Clinical Research Core (CRC) within the National Institute on Aging’s Clinical Unit.
• The CRC is under the direction of the NIA Clinical Director; the CRC’s research goal is the identification and development of new therapeutic targets for the treatment of age-related disease.
• The CRC serves as an infrastructure to facilitate the creation and development of therapeutic targets across the Intramural Research Program.
• The Diabetes Section performs glucose and insulin clamps that require a pharmacist to manage all regulatory processes involved in maintaining sterility, record keeping, dilution of various insulin concentrations, and glucose and deuterated glucose concentrations for glucose tracing in vivo. It also tests new agents that may influence insulin secretion before the agents come to market; all data and records must be stored under FDA guidelines and in compliance with standards set by AAHRPP, Association for the Accreditation of Research Protection Program.
• The work carried out in the lab/clinic provides the scientific basis for particular drug targets that would be further tested by the private sector.
• Nutritional supplementation and its benefit to aging phenotypes such as sarcopenia and frailty are also tested. This requires accurate measuring and capsulation per USP guidelines of any nutraceuticals under investigation.
• Additionally investigational new drugs are tested in the NIA Clinical Unit.
• Therefore, the incumbent must be versatile, knowledgeable of the fundamentals of compounding and organic chemistry, and be able to advise the pharmacologists of the possibilities underlying their targets—information such as solubility, compounding, FDA-approved preservatives, is a must.
• This person is a key person for the whole of the NIA IRP because of the interactions needed with the NIA pharmacologists.