Therapeutic Sciences

Entry requirements

Applicants for this course should have achieved a UK High 2:1 Honours Degree.

Months of entry

October

Course content

The course aims to select a cohort of students with the skills, motivation and ability to excel in order to create the next generation of scientific and business leaders in the therapeutics and healthcare sector.

The course is aimed at developing two types of mutually compatible future leaders:

1. Science Leaders: Those who make a decision to remain in science and will aspire to lead scientific teams, such as heads of genomics, biology, therapeutic development & innovation and clinical development, either within institutions or in pharma. These are the people who invent and discover new technologies and therapies based on fundamental research.
2. Science Hunters: These are the scientific entrepreneurs who understand Science Leaders’ innovations and who chiefly know how to transform the inventions into innovations.

This highly multi-disciplinary course is co-developed and co-delivered with industry experts.

Students will develop an understanding of the mechanisms underlying normal function and subsequent dysfunction in human diseases and their amelioration or cure with advanced therapeutic regimes. The program provides students with all the tools and quantitative skills necessary to understand, develop and implement modern cutting-edge techniques in therapeutic sciences and cover the range of conventional and novel therapeutic modalities, including understanding biological pathways and therapeutic mechanisms, diagnostic and prognostic tools, identifying novel targets, and characterizing the pharmacologic profiles of new compounds, including adverse effects and toxicity. The close industry partner involvement in the development and delivery of the course sets it apart from others in the UK and indeed, internationally. Students will benefit greatly from the academic expertise and real-world insights which will be brought together in this academic-industry partnership. The course places special emphasis on novel therapeutics approaches based on, but not exclusive to, recombinant protein technologies, gene therapy, gene editing, cell-based therapies, regenerative medicine and electroceuticals. Students will also understand the social, financial, ethical, legal and policy implications of the introduction of these new therapies, and the course will link this training very close to industrial, entrepreneurial, clinical and regulatory activities to encourage students to consider their studies in a society-wide context.

The aims of this training course are to:

• Give the student relevant teaching and experience of modern therapeutic science research and translation
• Expose them to a variety of research environments at different developmental stages, instilling the drivers and decision making required at each stage
• Introduce them to the basic and quantitative skills of experimental design, project management, time management etc. needed in research
• Familiarise the student with the practicalities of laboratory research, imparting an understanding of the nature of bench research, of record-keeping and data handling, of standard operating procedures and good laboratory practice
• Introduce them to basic analytical techniques needed to understand and contextualise their research
• Train students in effective teamwork and basic scientific writing and presentation skills
• Instil within students the importance of the scientific method and the diligence required in the planning and execution of research in the academic or industrial laboratory