13. You May Know a Toxic Person but Do You Know a Toxicologist? Interview with Terry Leyden, President and Recruiter at The Leyden Group

During the international Society of Toxicology (SOT) annual meeting in Baltimore, MD in March 2019, I met Terry Leyden, a 37-year-attendee! Terry is both President and Recruiter at his company, The Leyden Group, in business since 1980. Terry has filled over 600 jobs in the toxicology community ranging in specialties from chemical, pharmaceutical (legal drugs), consumer product, and contract research, etc.    In this episode on the Legal Drugs Podcast, Terry walks you through the exciting field of toxicology and even his own interest in become a toxicologist after spending so many decades learning about this diverse, global and vastly expanding field. He explains that there is a growing need for toxicologists in lieu of new world-wide regulations.  Today, there are more reasons for companies to hire toxicologists for their safety assessment in what's referred to as the product safety sciences. U.S. based companies, for example, selling their products all over the world create a need for more skilled recruits in this highly interdisciplinary field. In the world of drug development, toxicologists are a vital part of the drug development journey in order to help determine the safety of any new legal drug. While the SOT meeting is not focused solely on drug development, it is heavily attended by drug development industry personnel from the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and contract research organizations.     Terry describes the changes he's seen over the years at the SOT meeting. He states that most of the people he's seen at the meeting, starting in the 1980s, are large service (i.e. testing laboratories) companies that exhibit (ToxExpo) to represent their capabilities. He explains that he doesn't anticipate these companies will go away in the years to come.  More interestingly, Terry observes the evolution of new types of companies and services. Excitingly, with innovation and technology, animal use is declining with cellular modalities and highly technological equipment taking its place. Terry notes the new cell line companies, for instance, that simply were not in existence just 10 years ago. Regulatory agencies now consider many of these new modalities and technologies as acceptable scientific information for toxicologic safety assessment of legal drugs and other new product brought to market.    As the field of toxicology evolves further, Terry establishes great reasons for anyone to consider a career in this important field. Not only is there incredible job security, diversity and longevity in the field of toxicology, but those who've held many of these jobs will be looking to retire soon and be replaced by a new set of skilled safety assessment scientists.    Looking for a new job in 2020? Contact Terry Leyden at [email protected] or call 303-865-2897.  Terry's Twitter handle: @toxheadhunter. You can learn more about The Leyden Group here; https://leydengroup.com/.