Three Scottish universities to offer a new course in stratified medicine

Stratified medicine, which uses the genetic make-up of patients and their differing responses to drugs to create more personalised and effective forms of treatment, has been hailed as one of the most important concepts to emerge in 21^st century clinical science.

Now, 35 fully-funded places are being offered to graduates from the UK and European Union on a new 12-month Masters course in Stratified Medicine and Pharmacological Innovation which starts on September 15.

The innovative taught MSc programme, offered jointly by the Universities of Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Strathclyde, is being developed in conjunction with the industrial partners of the Stratified Medicine Scotland Innovation Centre (SMS-IC) which will be based at the new South Glasgow Hospitals Campus.

The course harnesses Scotland’s strengths in stratified medicine, clinical trials, bioinformatics and pharmacogenomics to provide focused training which integrates basic and clinical sciences and equips students with grounding in the essential skills required to design, execute and evaluate modern clinical interventions. It will also cover aspects of commercial innovation and entrepreneurial skills, together with the principles which underpin the emerging science at the interface between genetics and pharmacology.

Students will be given the opportunity to undertake an industry placement, as their main project, at a partner commercial organisation or company or at one of the four universities involved. They will also undergo theoretical and practical training in state-of-the-art research processes, enabling them to appreciate how to apply novel stratified approaches alongside clinical pharmacological, regulatory and ethical principles to the optimisation of future clinical research and therapeutic research.

Participants will be offered a choice of base institution – either Glasgow or Aberdeen – and both groups of students will take part in modules/courses provided by the Universities of Dundee, Edinburgh and Strathclyde.