The Pharmacodynamics, Biomarkers and Personalised Therapy course is a one-week module of the MSc in Experimental Therapeutics. Offered by the Department of Oncology and the Department for Continuing Education’s CPD Centre, the week will be led by Dr Elaine Johnstone, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, and will feature face-to-face lectures and tutorials from some of Oxford's leading clinicians and scientists, as well as a practical visit to one of Oxford's research laboratories.
The module can be taken as a stand-alone short course. It includes group work, discussions, guest lectures, and interaction and feedback with tutors and lecturers.
The pharmacodynamic process of drug therapy provides the link between the pharmacokinetic profile and the therapeutic effect of a drug. It encompasses how the drug produces the required pharmacological effect by identifying how the drug is acting, how we can measure that effect and whether there is a dose response. Furthermore it helps us understand how the pharmacological effect is translated into therapeutic effect and identify modifiers of the therapeutic effects in populations.
This module will provide students with the opportunity to learn more about and discuss the following topics:
The module can be taken as a stand-alone short course. It includes group work, discussions, guest lectures, and interaction and feedback with tutors and lecturers.
The pharmacodynamic process of drug therapy provides the link between the pharmacokinetic profile and the therapeutic effect of a drug. It encompasses how the drug produces the required pharmacological effect by identifying how the drug is acting, how we can measure that effect and whether there is a dose response. Furthermore it helps us understand how the pharmacological effect is translated into therapeutic effect and identify modifiers of the therapeutic effects in populations.
This module will provide students with the opportunity to learn more about and discuss the following topics:
- Receptor pharmacology and how drugs act
- The relationship between pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics
- Pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic (PK:PD) modelling
- Monitoring and measuring drug effects
- Biomarkers and surrogate endpoints in clinical trials
- Biobanks and biopsies - relevance to pharmacodynamics
- Pharmacogenomics: history, utility and translation into clinical practice
- Recent progress towards personalised medicine
- Includes a laboratory session on biomarker analysis in patient samples
