Drug Innovation

Do you want to know how you can develop new drugs to combat drug-resistant microorganisms? How you can use gene or protein technologies to create therapies targeted at individual patients? How to find a way to imprint the immune system to increase tolerance? Reducing the side effects of treatment by finding new ways to deliver drugs directly onto the tumor? Or how you can update and speed up the drug regulatory process? 

From novel insight into a disease to a new therapy

The Drug Innovation Master’s programme focuses on the improvement and management of small molecule drugs or biomolecular drugs. You can become skilled at many topics, such as the development of new vaccines, gene therapeutics, the application of organoids, and medical nutrition. This can lead to a promising new drug, which then needs to go through approval. This raises a whole new set of challenges in which you can be trained, for example the establishment of new methods and criteria for evaluating the quality, efficacy, safety, and performance of the drug.

The stages of drug research from ‘lab bench to bedside’

This programme is translational, so you can contribute in either one of the stages of drug research from ‘lab bench to bedside’. This ranges from working out the latest insights into the cause of a disease, to the development of a new drug, and finally to investigating the drugs’ long-term safety.

You can choose to join research projects on topics like to develop new drugs to combat drug-resistant microorganism, to use gene or protein technologies to create therapies targeted at individual patients, to explore the relationship between gut microbes and brain disease, to find new ways to deliver drugs directly into the tumor in order to reduce the side effects of treatment, or to  update and speed up the drug regulatory process.

Interdisciplinary field

Drug innovation is an interdisciplinary field, which pulls together expertise from chemical, biological, physical, and medical sciences and bioinformatics. This interdisciplinarity is central to the search for new solutions to currently incurable diseases.While doing your research project you will become a member of the research team, and this gives you the opportunity to gain lots of practical experience in doing innovative drug research.

Tracks

Within the Master's you have a lot of freedom to tailor your own programme. You choose one of the following tracks to focus on research in the fields of:

• Pharmacology research
• Pharmacoepidemiology and clinical pharmacology
• Biomolecular mass spectrometry and proteomics
• Pharmaceutics
• Chemical biology and drug discovery

Why in Utrecht

• Utrecht University is host to a number of research groups conducting world-leading work in the field of drug innovation. You will be able to follow a programme of study that reflects your own personal interests through a research project, writing assignment, and electives.
• Freedom to design your own programme, by choosing the track, research project and electives that best fit your interests. You also select one out of 9 thematic profiles which are designed to equip you with skills for your future career in a direction that appeals you most. 
• Students are able to follow their Master’s programme at Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences (UIPS); selected students get educated by some of the best researchers in these research areas.
• This Master's is part of the Graduate School of Life Sciences (GSLS). The GSLS brings together the research expertise and facilities of the faculties of Science, Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, in cooperation with UMC Utrecht - offering you an interdisciplinary approach.