Drug Discovery and Safety

Specializations

There are five specializations to choose from:

• Biomolecular Drug Analysis
  In this specialization, you will be involved in the development of new methods for analysing living cells – finding the proteins associated with particular diseases, for example. Or the quick and accurate measurement of large numbers of biological samples, such as those taken to test for performance-enhancing drugs in sport. You will also develop fully automatic systems for the study of interactions between drugs and proteins (High-Throughput Screening). 

• Computational Medicinal Chemistry & Toxicology
  This specialization is all about using extremely fast computers to study new molecules and to predict their properties and interactions with biological molecules. Even before a molecule has been created and tested, you will be able to forecast whether it is likely to have medicinal applications.

• Drug Design & Synthesis
  This specialization concentrates on the design and synthesis of new substances with improved or modified biological properties. These new compounds can form the basis for new medicines: the drugs of the future.

• Molecular Pharmacology (Drug Discovery & Target Finding)
  In this specialization, you will investigate where and how a drug's molecule works in the human body. You will study the mechanisms by which a medicine has its particular effect. Research into the potential for new drugs is carried out at both genomic and proteomic levels.

• Molecular Toxicology (Drug Disposition & Safety Assessment)
  In this specialization, you will study the causes and workings of the unwanted and sometimes toxic properties of substances. Are those substances absorbed by proteins? And how can they be metabolized with the help of enzymes? Does everybody have these enzymes? And what happens with a drug if your genes don't express that one key enzyme?

Course descriptions

Further information on the specializations and course descriptions can be found at:

Study guide