Drug Design

This programme is offered by the UCL Division of Medicine and the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research and is designed for the more research-oriented student, complementing Drug Design MSc. Conducting cutting-edge research within the drug industries and UCL's academic group, it offers opportunities for networking and future career development.

This programme teaches students the latest methodologies and approaches and covers all aspects of drug design: drug discovery, computational and structural biology, screening, assay development, medicinal chemistry, and most importantly the industrial practices involved in modern drug design technology.

Students undertake modules to the value of 180 credits.

The programme consists of two core modules (30 credits), three optional modules (45 credits) and a dissertation/report (105 credits).

Optional modules

Students will select three from the following Drug Design MSc modules:

• Bioinformatics and Structural Biology as applied to Drug Design
• Biological Molecules as Therapeutics
• Biophysical Screening Methods, X-ray Crystallography, Protein NMR and Phenotypic Screening
• Cheminformatics and Modelling for Drug Design
• Fragment-based Drug Design
• Target Selection – Commercial and Intellectual Property Aspects
• Target Selection – Scientific Grounds
• Core modules
• Plus two taught transferable skills modules delivered by CALT (UCL Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching):
• Investigating Research
• Researcher Professional Development

Optional modules

There are no optional modules for this programme.

Dissertation/report

All students undertake an independent research project which culminates in a dissertation of 15,000 to 20,000 words.\

Teaching and learning

The programme is delivered through a combination of lectures, seminars, tutorials and problem classes, critical journal clubs and a research project. Assessment is through coursework, practicals, laboratory work, examination, dissertation and oral presentation.

An upper second-class UK Bachelor’s degree in a relevant subject (for example, life sciences, medicine, chemistry) or an overseas qualification of an equivalent standard, or an appropriate professional qualification, or a minimum of three years’ relevant work experience.

Two bursaries of £2500 are available for Home/Eu students to reduce tuition fees.