About us

The Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences (UIPS) – the research institute of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the Faculty of Science of Utrecht University – was founded in 1992. The scientific research at UIPS focuses on processes around discovery, development, and use of drugs and medical nutrition using molecular and technological principles from the Natural and Life Sciences. The focus is shifting from small-molecule blockbusters to the high hanging fruit of peptides, proteins, nucleotides and even more advanced medical products like (stem) cells. UIPS has been focusing on these high hanging fruits for over 30 years.

These bioinspired products offer major scientific challenges for translation. For example, the key success factor for gene therapy and exon skipping is successful delivery to cells. The same is true for the mRNA vaccines: they need lipid nanoparticles. UIPS started a graduate (Drug Innovation), master (Drug Innovation) and bachelor (College of Pharmaceutical Sciences) programme to train a new generation of excellent researchers, who can face this challenge of use-inspired fundamental research on bioinspired therapeutic solutions.

The research of UIPS is ideally positioned in the Faculty of Science to work on basic scientific problems (Science for Life: Studying the Building Blocks of Life) and to translate new findings into potential solutions to urgent societal medical needs, which are addressed in the Faculties of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. This field is growing rapidly due to developments in Technology. 

UIPS embedding (Figure by http://fishwife.nl/)

UIPS is an integral part of Utrecht Life Sciences (ULS) which is a collaborative effort involving the Faculties of Science, Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, the University Medical Centre Utrecht (UMCU), the Hogeschool Utrecht, the city and province of Utrecht and research organisations such as RIVM, TNO, CBG-MEB, Danone/Nutricia-research, GSK and GenMab.

UIPS staff members have positions at the department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and some also at Chemistry and Biology, of the Faculty of Science. UIPS has strategic alliances with clinics/patients via UMCU, Veterinary Medicine, NKI, Princes Maxima Center for Pediatric Oncology, SIR and Sanquin. Furthermore, UIPS has alliances with companies like ThermoFisher Scientific, Danone Nutricia Research, GenMab and Nanocell. And UIPS has alliances with regulatory bodies CBG-MEB, EMA and ZIN.