Postgraduate Medicine and Therapeutics 2018-2019

This course is designed to provide or revise the basic skills you will require for your MSc. The course will revise basic laboratory skills and techniques and advance these to a level required to undertake graduate practical classes and projects by developing hands-on experience, competence and confidence in key laboratory skills. 

This course is designed for Academic Foundation Program (AFP) doctors, although it is also open to any doctor aspiring to clinical academia. You will apply the generic research skills that you learned within other modules to a clinical context to further develop your skills towards a career in academic medicine. This course will facilitate your understanding of the important strategies and approaches that will underpin your future research career.

The course focuses on the molecular mechanisms of drug action and how cutting edge research can advance current therapeutic approaches to disease.   The utility of molecular pharmacology will be highlighted in the context of current and future drug discovery for cardiovascular, neurological and metabolic diseases and cancer. 

This course is designed for Academic Foundation Program (AFP) doctors, although it is also open to any doctor aspiring to clinical academia. You will be provided with training in generic research skills within a clinical context to allow you to develop your skills towards a career in academic medicine. The teaching combines interactive and practical approaches which will facilitate your understanding of the important strategies and approaches that will underpin your future research career.

This course will describe and review the use of medicinal compounds in man together with methods to assess and describe efficacy and toxicity. A number of exemplar disease areas and at risk populations will be selected and the drugs used to treat these conditions and populations discussed and explained. The importance of understand drug mechanisms of action and associated risk as well as benefit will be emphasised in a clinical setting. The course will consider both drugs in current use and those in development.

The first research project of the MRes programme involves working on an independent research project prior to completion of a dissertation. It involves utilisation of much of the skills developed throughout the previous semester, and is selected based on student interests and preferences.

This course reviews a range of essential methodologies that are currently used in medical research from molecular technologies to human studies.  Experts in the various techniques will describe the fundamentals of the methodology and show how they can be applied.

Pharmacokinetics describe “what the body does to a drug” and thus is a central feature of applied pharmacology. The course will develop an understanding of the role that pharmacokinetics play in all aspects of drug administration, distribution, metabolism and excretion and how these effects can be modelled and predicted graphically and mathematically. Such modelling is a fundament of therapeutic regimen design, drug development, clinical pharmacology and drug safety and will be considered within all of these contexts providing a broad and relevant appreciation of the importance of pharmacokinetics to the pharmacologist

The will comprise lectures, tutorials and seminars. The curriculum will provide an in-depth look at pharmacovigilance, communication with regulators and the public using examples from both first and third world countries and will include detection of adverse drug reactions; causality assessment; prevention of adverse drug reactions including correct prescribing, prevention of drug errors and promotion of rational drug use; and communication of risk-benefit information to the general public. It will also include an introduction to the commercialisation of scientific ideas in the form of Bio-Business covering the pharma industry, spin out companies, IPR and finance.

This course will provide you with an introduction to evidence-based medicine. It will also include a description of the elements of pharmaceutical research as well as of the drug development process.

Gaining direct experience of the processes involved in managing the early stages of a specialist research project in nutrition this course focuses on an initial literature review of a research topic, preparing a research protocol, as well as developing good professional practice when undertaking a scientific research project.

The research project is the climax of the MSc programme and involves working on an independent research project for 12 weeks prior to completion of a dissertation. It involves utilisation of much of the skills developed throughout the previous 2 semesters, and is selected based on student interests and preferences.