Postgraduate Medicine and Therapeutics 2024-2025

The course combines lecture-based learning, tutorials and laboratory practical’s, with the aim of providing student with hands on, supported experience of the University of Aberdeen.

Early exercises will encourage engagement with the University IT systems and will help students transition into their programme.

A combination of simulated and wet practical classes will develop practical skills across the cohort, equipping those less experienced with necessary competence and confidence and offering those with more experience the opportunity to refresh and enhance their skills.

Throughout the course, students will be encouraged to communicate through the virtual learning environment about current research topics as a means of encouraging literature engagement and analysis, culminating in a student-led journal club event.

An early written exercise will encourage student engagement from the outset of the programme and provide the opportunity for students to seek support in completing their first assignment at the University.

Overall, the course aims to deliver a soft landing and a wealth of important skills to incoming students to help support their transition in the University of Aberdeen.

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 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.

This course will cover the principles of toxicology including molecular toxicology and target organ toxicity, mechanisms of cell death, molecular carcinogenesis and safety evaluation of carcinogens, adverse outcome pathways (AOPs) and new alternative methods (NAMs). These elements will be taught around the processes involved in drug discovery and development and will include advanced learning on drug metabolism and drug transporters.  The course will also provide the principles and practice of risk assessment and regulatory toxicology.  External experts are invited to provide their unique expertise on a range of topics, which include regulatory aspects as well as an industrial perspective on the drug discovery process.

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

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.

The course will provide an understanding of the role of governance and regulatory requirements for clinical research and will be invaluable to researchers whether scientists or medics.