Tracks
The programme offers 5 tracks, each focusing on a specific field.
At the start of the programme you must select 1 track you want to study. Your choice determines which courses you take and the type of research you are involved in for your research project. This way you gain in-depth knowledge in the research field of one of the five divisions of Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences. The scientific research at UIPS focuses on processes around discovery, development, and effects of drugs or medical nutrition. As alternative, you can do the research at other Life Sciences groups at Utrecht University.
Track options
What can you do if you choose for this track? The research in the Pharmacology group focuses on the basic mechanisms underlying non-communicable disorders and their pharmacological manipulations via drugs, biologicals and/or medical food components. The group members investigate the immune system and the central nervous system. They want to gain deeper insight into the interacting pathways utilized by cells and mediators. This allows for development of new concepts for prevention and/or treatment with a strong focus on inflammation management and organ function restoration.
The experimental pharmacology section has a strong focus on regenerative medicine and disease modelling, for which innovative tools such as organ-on-a-chip technologies are used. The section immuno-pharmacology investigates the relationship between immune cells and their mediators in the development, maintenance and inhibition of immune-related diseases such as food allergy, asthma, COPD and inflammatory bowel diseases. The section in vivo pharmacology of respiratory diseases focuses on COPD and asthma. The psychopharmacology section puts their efforts on brain mechanisms that contribute to the development of stress-related disorders, including anxiety, depression, and psychosis. The section neuro-immuno-pharmacology performs integrated mechanistic research on the contribution of the gut-immune-brain axis in both neurological and immunological disorders. Courses to deepen your knowledge in this field are Advanced pharmacology, and Immunopharmacology.
What can you do if you choose for this track? The research of this division aims at improvement of existing and new medicines by investigating their safety, effectiveness, access and use. There are three centres:
- Pharmacoepidemiology, which aims at the development, improvement and evaluation of innovative observational pharmacoepidemiologic methods to obtain reliable information on benefits and harms of medicines after marketing in real life.
- Clinical Therapeutics, which focuses on the beneficial and adverse effects of pharmacotherapy both in outpatient as in hospital settings, linking both exposure and outcome data from various sources, such as clinical, pharmacy, laboratory, patient sources.
- Pharmaceutical Policy and Regulation, which develops new methods for independent policy and regulatory research. Their goal is to come to evidence-based policy scenarios that bridge the population level to individualized medicine. On top of that they want to end-up with regulatory and health technology assessment (HTA) decision-making on (bio)pharmaceuticals throughout the world.
Courses to deepen your knowledge in this field are Pharmaceutical policy analysis, Pharmacoeconomics, and Pharmacoepidemiology.
What can you do if you choose for this track? The research in the Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics group focuses on the use of a wide diversity of the newest mass spectrometers to obtain new insights in cellular processes in health and disease. Mass spectrometry enables the characterization of cellular biomolecules and metabolites in relation to their biological function in health and disease. The development of innovative bioinformatics tools and dedicated software is also an important part of the research in this group.
A large emphasis is on the structural characterization of proteins and their post-translational modifications as well as the investigation of protein complexes and protein interactions with, amongst others, drugs to understand responses like sensitivity and resistance. The research programme also encompasses the bioanalytical research of advanced pharmaceuticals such as antibody-based molecules and gene-delivery vehicles. The research program is both part of the Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences, and of the Bijvoet Center for Biomolecular Research.
Courses to deepen your knowledge in this field are Introduction to Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry, Advanced Bioinformatics: Data mining and data integration for life sciences, and Advanced Omics for Life Sciences.
What can you do if you choose for this track? The pharmaceutics research group focusses on the design and pre-clinical testing of tailor-made drug delivery systems for controlled release. These drug delivery systems aim at therapy and prevention of life-threatening diseases such as cancer, inflammation and infectious diseases.
The research is centered around 3 themes, namely the design of:
- Nanocarriers, intended for the local or systemic delivery of drugs to diseased sites. A particular focus is on the challenge of intracellular delivery of large biomacromolecules.
- Macroscopic scaffolds, which allow preparation of injectable hydrogels or microspheres for sustained release of small molecule drugs or proteins. Fine-tuning of the release profile occurs by changing the chemical properties of the used polymers, and/or the cross linking density of the polymeric networks.
- Scaffolds for regenerative medicine and cell-based therapies. Polymeric scaffolds allow the production of printable biomaterials in the format of 3D scaffolds on which cells can adhere, while these can be further functionalized with biomolecules to support cell growth and tissue regeneration.
This combination of complementary fields of expertise allows the development of novel drug delivery systems from scratch up to the preclinical testing phase. The division of Pharmaceutics has intensive collaborations with academic, industrial, and governmental groups.
A course to deepen your knowledge in this field is Nanomedicines.
What can you do if you choose for this track? The research in this group focuses on carbohydrates using chemical or enzymatic synthesis. Carbohydrates surround every cell, and many virions play an important role in recognition, cell binding, cell entry and associated immune responses. To improve the understanding of these important molecular interactions, modified peptides, peptidomimetics and carbohydrates are synthesized, and their interactions with cellular molecules are studied. This should lead to new ways of influencing particular interactions between proteins, or peptides and proteins, or carbohydrates and proteins. The aim of this research is to synthesize new bio-active compounds, to find new approaches for the treatment of still incurable diseases, and new approaches to yet unsatisfactory treatments. The research program of this division is part of the Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences, as well as the Bijvoet Center for Biomolecular Research.
Courses to deepen your knowledge in this field are Advanced organic synthesis, Chemical biology, or Design of anti-infective drugs.