How does one become a pharmaceutical scientist

Just recently I came to the realization(after weeks of deep thougts on what I want and need to do) I'd love to research on medicines and develop medicines that save peoples lives(though I'm aware its not as simple as that) and based on my research you would need to study pharmaceutical sciences in university, and obtain a bachelors degree(but I'm thinking of a masters degree because employers apparently prefer that over a bachelors degree). But I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do at this point. Pretty sure I'll have to research and figure out what university(and country) I'd like to study in and write an application towards that university.
Any advice?
ps- didn't mean to post this in the 'educational debate' thread, and I don't know how to change threads once I've already posted something

Studying pharmaceutical sciences isn’t the only option available for this career. I’m currently a research scientist in Big Pharma who designs and develops drugs against diseases and I did a chemistry degree (integrated masters) and PhD. It really depends on what section of the drug discovery spectrum you want to work in. In my experience those who are actually in the lab and synthesise the molecules, research how to make them more potent etc. are practically always chemists with chemistry degrees. This is what I do on a daily basis, we synthesise drugs to bind a receptor on a cancerous protein and every week we get the biological data back on how well our compounds did. And if they’re not great we use our knowledge to discuss how we can better tweak the molecules and then we synthesise them. These compounds are then sent off for testing and it will be those in biology and DMPK (drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics) who do all the cell work, assays etc.

You’re right in that a masters is pretty much necessary for a job like this as virtually all applicants to these positions will have the minimum of a masters. However, if you really do want to go into research as a career then I would strongly recommend doing a PhD as lots of companies list this as a requirement and it will mean you straight away start on a much higher salary than the research scientists who only have a masters.

thanks for the valuable input.
In that case I'll have to aim for a PhD; how long do you reckon it'll take from the time I enter uni to when I obtain a PhD(assuming I don't fail and whatnot)- how long did it take you to get your PhD if you don't mind me asking?
And would it be possible to work on both the chemistry and biology side of things, as in, maybe alternate between the two from time to time or do you only have the option of specializing in one of them in this field(sorry if it's a silly question, and also if I asked too much.)

It's not a silly question and you haven't asked too much! Feel free to ask me as much as you want as it's not easy to find research scientists online or in real life who will answer questions.

The time frames I'm describing here are for the UK, in Europe everything tends to be at least a year longer. But here an integrated masters is 4 years and then my PhD was 3 years, and I took no gap years or years in between my degree and PhD, so it was a total of 7 years for me in academia to get my doctorate. However, my PhD was on the short side, it's now more the norm for PhDs to be 4 years and the exact time will depend on the funding body that is paying for it. So you're looking at 7 years minimum, possibly 8 from when you start your degree to when you come out as a doctor. But I would say a PhD is definitely worth it because 1) you spend at least 3 years researching something and end up becoming essentially the world expert in your particular topic. If you want a career in research then you should want to do a PhD. And you of course contribute something original to science that no one has ever done before. 2) With a PhD you'll immediately start on a higher pay grade and position than research scientists who only have a masters. There are people in my lab who literally do the exact same job as me but they're paid significantly less because they don't have PhDs. And those with masters will often take possibly 4-5 years to reach the same position and salary as someone with a PhD so they may as well have done a PhD in the first place and started off on more.

I don't think that's really feasible because if, for example, you do a chemistry degree you won't have the biological knowledge to work with cells and the advanced biology and vice versa. Even if your PhD is mixed (like mine, I did synthetic organic chemistry but also worked with human blood proteins and antibodies) when it comes to applying for jobs in these companies you will have to pick the chemistry positions or biology positions to interview for and they will have wildly different requirements. Biological positions will practically always require minimum a degree in biology and chemistry positions a degree in chemistry, so you sort of need to decide which side you want to go into as you can't really specialise in both. You can still have knowledge of both though, because for example in my job, when we synthesise the compounds and they go off for testing, we get back the biological data and have to make sense of it to inform how we move forward with our research and drug design. So for instance, we will receive data on how well our drugs were metabolised, how stable they are in the body, how strongly they bind to receptors, how easily they can cross cell membranes, the rate at rich the cell efflux pumps get rid of them etc. I don't know what it's like in companies that are more focused on biology and chemical biology, but in Big Pharma at least it's mainly the chemists who are doing the research and drug design, the biologists and DMPK people don't do research, they just get given our drugs and do all the tests on them, so that's something else to consider.