In the Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences master’s programme you are trained at the leading edge of drug-design and fundamental research of new drugs, optimization of existing drugs, and personalised medicine.
Despite major advances in drug-research, many common diseases such as cancers, neurological diseases, cardiovascular disease and other auto-immune diseases, lack effective treatment, or are found incurable. You are trained for a scientific career in drug research and development. Depending on your interest, you can choose from seven specialisations to further extend your scientific training and theoretical background.
Read more about our Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences programme.
Find more reasons to study Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences at Leiden University.
The master’s programme of Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences (BPS) aims to train you in the research area of bio-pharmaceutical sciences and drug research in such a way that you have extensive knowledge and hands-on experience to be able to work independently as a scientific researcher. Moreover, you have a wide range of other career opportunities bio-pharmaceutical industry, science communication, and education.
The Dutch Master's Selection Guide (Keuzegids Masters 2017) ranked this programme as the best in the field of Chemistry in the Netherlands.
Drug Innovation is about:
The Master’s in Drug Innovation programme focuses on diagnostics and the improvement and management of small molecule and biomolecular drugs. Drug innovation covers many topics such as the development of new vaccines and the study of antibodies, gene therapeutics, and medical nutrition. Once developed, a new drug then needs to go through approval, which raises a whole new set of challenges, for example the establishment of new methods and criteria for evaluating the quality, efficacy, safety, and performance of the drug.
This broad, interdisciplinary programme is open to graduates from a wide range of disciplines such as chemistry, biology, pharmaceutical sciences, biomedical sciences, or medicine.
Our programme offers a diverse suite of elective courses. This means you can concentrate on the topics of most interest to you. You will also take an internship with one of the research teams working on drug innovation at Utrecht University. This work may lead to publication in scientific journals within the field or new drug patents or protocols.
Graduates of this programme may go on to undertake research in drug innovation at universities, in the pharmaceutical or and biotechnology industry or to work in science or healthcare.
Programme
Drug innovation is an interdisciplinary field, which pulls together expertise from chemical, biological and medical sciences. This interdisciplinarity is central to the search for new solutions to currently incurable diseases. You will contribute to this field by undertaking two internships over a total of 15 months and submitting a writing assignment.
Graduated?
After graduation, you will have the skills needed to translate a drug-related problem into a relevant research question and will also be able to design and perform the research needed to solve this question. Finally, you will also be able to critically reflect on your own research and report on it, both verbally and in writing. These skills are highly transferable and will enable you to work independently within a competitive labour market.
