Year 12s: what will be the first way you research your future options? >>

Which course do you have to learn to make treatments for dementia.. cancer ?

Does pharmacy graduates come up with treatments for diseases like cancer, parkinsons and dementia.

if not what are they called and what course would you have to do ?

Reply 1

Coriolantus

They can do, if they go into industry. Not many of us do, partly because it's competitive and also if you're like me, when I started uni I was desperate to go into industry and then along the way decided I was more interested in hospital really, but pharmacy's great because it's actually pretty broad. I know that sounds counterintuitive because it's quite a specific topic but you do medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, physiology, you study formulations and that kind of thing, so it covers quite a lot of different areas. Quite a few of our lecturers are medicinal chemists or pharmacologists, but there's others who lecture in medicinal chemistry who studied pharmacy at uni. The pharmaceutical industry as far as I'm aware tends to require a PhD as well as a degree, but pharmacy's great because if you do all four years you come out with a masters, and after pre-reg I know a few people locum as pharmacists at the weekends or evenings to pay their way through their PhD.

Long story short, yes, if you do pharmacy you could do that kind of thing. Or if you did a chemistry degree and focussed on medicinal chemistry, and I'm not sure about biochemistry but that would probably lead you on to a PhD into that kind of thing if you were interested :smile: