I'm hoping to have a career in developing new medicines, especially ones developed with no animal testing. What should I be working at now and what should I expect to do to work for a career like this? I can volunteer at a hospital and am currently taking advanced sciences (chemisty, bio, soon physics). What should I be thinking about college wise?
It's good that you are focusing on the sciences now. Make sure you absorb as much of the basic knowledge as possible, because it will make everything else easier in the future as far as those classes go. And don't forget, while science classes are imperative, math is equally so. You'll want to make sure you take math every semester possible, stay ahead and get good grades. If you really want to excell and stand out in your science classes, also take some technical writing courses. They are marvelous. Sometimes you can even find technical writing courses aimed specifically at the sciences. College wise, you want to look at academic rankings first and foremost. I'm assuming you won't be going to school to party (aka fail), so be sure academics is first on your list. Check to see how many classes are taught by TAs, how big the class/lab sections are. You can even contact some professors now if you'd like, and ask them what they think proper preparation calls for. Also for med-school, study skills almost matter more than the actual subject matter. If you can't study daily, chances are you won't do well at all. You need to learn how to focus and be accurate in your work on little sleep. Good luck.
For developing drugs, you don't want med-school as much as lab research stuff. It depends what aspect of things you want to do. With a medical degree you can do clinical research--be involved with the studies that look at new drugs once they have entered into testing with people. For earlier stages, you'd be doing more along the lines of R&D, research and development, more often done with a PhD. Again you can work on many steps along the way, so sometimes people are MD/PhD. Depends again. For any of the fields, though, you need extensive science background, and especially for the PhD route, good research experience. So for college, you'd want to see what you can do as far as research goes.
Keep Pharmacology and Medicinal Chemistry in mind, as those will definitely help, if not get you to where you want to be alone
It sounds like you're doing enough to get into university already. I'd suggest emailing the university you might want to go to or any in general. They will tell you what is on offer and what subjects to study, also, what careers you might be able to have. The thing about a science degree, is that it is such a broad area. As well as an Arts major (psychology) i am also a Science major (forensics). To work in testing, chemistry and the next step up, which we have as cell metabolism, are very important as is biology. There are subjects to do with instruments which teach you about what you will use, research skills might be handy too. Studying the necessary subjects, along with practical work or field experience in a lab while at uni or another laboratory, will give you the knowledge to work in a number of areas. A government run lab, smaller institution, overseas, even working with chemists and pharmachologists. A well as a major you might also do a minor in a related field and use both areas. Physics is not such a necessary unless you do forensics, or an area where that will obviously be used. I have studied physics and the best it's used for is to be an astronaut i think But like i said before, i'd contact a uni or find websites until you have a general idea but don't be worried if you haven't made a desicion for a while. I know a lot of people into their 3rd year and have no idea. Science is such a wide subject so some decide to do the straight science degree majoring in biomed, then they can used that to enter forensics, medicine or dentisty etc. I'm certain you'll figure it out when you get started at uni but for now, you're in a great place academically with the subjects you're doing. Maybe make an appointment with a uni advisor in the science faculty, they are the best to ask and are fantastic at helping put students on the right path. Have fun above all else.
I completely overlooked that part of the post (developing drugs) so... looking to Biochemistry, Biochemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering.
You'll need a good foundation in chemistry then biochemistry and Biology such as Microbiology, Cell biology, Molecular biology, Immunology, etc. Your undergrad major could be chemistry or biology or, if offered, one of the more specific areas mentioned above. Go to grad school for a PhD. A PhD in just about any of the above fields including Pharmacology would be sufficient training for a career in R&D and drug developement. The current and future trend for drug developement will be towards non-traditional approaches for drugs so a good background in the state-of-the-art of biomedical research will be important for the future of drug development. In general just about all of the very many biological research labs wourldwide work towards the ultimate goal of developing treatments and therapeutics for various diseases. Once a suitable, safe and effective therapy or treatment "molecule" is found in the research lab, it is passed on to more pharmacology and pharmacy based labs to formulate it into a form and dosing regimine that is usefull for administering to patients. The drug is then put through extensive scruitiny and testing for effectiveness and long-term safety. You would want to consider which part of this process you may want to be infolved with.
