Reid bursary winner: an interview with Rajit Kolamunne

In this interview Rajit Kolamunne (Senior Bioanalytical Scientist, AstraZeneca; Cambridge, UK) discusses his current research focuses and how the Reid bursary has helped him to present his work to a wider community. The Reid Bioanalytical Forum is an international conference covering topics such as regulatory bioanalysis, bioanalysis of the future and bioanalysis beyond pharma. To reflect the heritage of the Reid Bioanalytical Forum, organizers hosted a competition to win attendance to the event with several scientists receiving bursaries.

Questions discussed:

Could you briefly describe yourself?

I’m Rajit Kolamunne, from the discovery bioanalysis group at AstraZeneca. I represent the integrated bioanalysis function within clinical pharmacology and safety sciences, covering a variety of therapeutic areas.

What are your current research focuses at AstraZeneca?

As a member of the discovery bioanalysis group, my current research is primarily focused on delivering most precise data of bioanalysis that encompasses pharmacokinetics data and translational biomarker data generated from a variety of platforms to gain insight into the therapeutic efficacy, off target liabilities and the safety of drug modalities. Especially to make ‘go or no-go decisions’ so this is a very critical way of reviewing data. Additionally, I investigate novel methodologies, where we can streamline our bioanalysis portfolio especially application of data analytics to streamline our data analysis tasks.

What are the next steps in your research?

My next step of research involves the maximization of newly developed assay tools, especially including ex vivo whole blood assay. For this, I have discussed with the mechanistic pharmacology team and I have explored external collaborative partners, such as academia, to gain more insight into our unknown areas of off target liabilities and to tackle some other challenges that we are currently facing. Further, I will examine my Python-driven algorithm to analyze pharmacokinetics data.

How has the Reid bursary helped you?

It has helped me to directly and easily represent my work to a wider community – to gain their insights and perspectives. Also, it gave me some self-motivation and offered me some recognition within the field to last long as a bioanalyst.

What can the REID/wider bioanalytical community do to help early-career researchers?

I think Reid has been great at awarding early researchers in several ways so far, but I would like to see more involvement of big players including industry and some additional support for early-career researchers. Especially helping them to integrate within the industry and to increase networking and possible collaborations.

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