Summary
Highlights
Shannon Colbert explains her role as the Quality Assurance Manager, which involves promoting a center of excellence in radiopharmaceutical manufacturing and development. Her primary responsibility is to ensure the facility adheres to good manufacturing compliance regulations, maintaining the drug establishment license granted by Health Canada.
Shannon's academic path began with chemistry, driven by an interest in pharmaceutical development. She later explored engineering, specifically biomedical engineering, before discovering toxicology. The toxicology program at the University of Saskatchewan, with its focus on both biomedical and environmental aspects, deeply interested her.
Her interest in pharmaceuticals and biomedical science led her to a lab manager position, which evolved into involvement with regulatory development, pharmaceutical quality control, and ultimately quality assurance. She earned an honors degree in toxicology with a minor in chemistry from the University of Saskatchewan.
During her honors program, she built strong relationships with researchers, leading to recruitment into graduate studies. She designed her own program to research human cardiovascular physiology. Concurrently, she taught human physiology at the University of Saskatchewan, which deepened her understanding of the campus and motivated her to return to work at the cyclotron center.
Shannon emphasizes that while paths like medicine or nursing seem more obvious for helping people, pursuing basic science, particularly human physiology, is incredibly fulfilling. Despite the challenges of regulatory compliance, knowing that her work ensures high-quality radiopharmaceuticals for cancer scans, helping patients get timely diagnoses and treatment, makes her hard work and schooling worthwhile.