Education

Pharmacy undergraduate education at Leiden Pharmacy combines the strong scientific foundation of the bachelor programme Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences with experience-based learning and a strong focus on pharmaceutical patient care and pharmaceutical treatment in the master programme Pharmacy.

In the eighties of the last century the Center for Biopharmaceutical Sciences, predecessor of LACDR, was established after the Pharmacy programme had to be discontinued because an austerity operation focused on concentration of the scientific education within the Netherlands. Since then the focus of research and education in Leiden shifted from classical pharmacy to innovative fundamental drug research. In the first years since the training of Pharmacists returned to Leiden, collaboration between LUMC and LACDR focused on discussing the educational programme together, ensuring that Bio-Pharmaceutical Science bachelor students would have a soft landing in the Master of Pharmacy programme. However, as the programme developed and students started looking for their research projects the two departments also grew closer in their research interests. 

Martijn Manson, later joined by Swantje Völler, do a tremendous job connecting students to research groups. Many students prefer a research project in a hospital pharmacy, often in a department they already are accustomed to by their pharmacy internship. Others find their way to the LACDR research groups, particularly in the groups of those who have lectured in the master programme. Through our teaching the students are inspired for specific research topics, but the teaching also brings researchers together. 

For example Kirsten Schimmel and Sophie Wassenaar (LUMC), together with Wim Jiskoot (LACDR), supervised a joint master student project on the handling of the biopharmaceuticals infliximab and bevacizumab in daily practice and the consequences for stability of the product. In this project knowledge of existing drugs of the hospital pharmacy of the LUMC is brought together with fundamental knowledge on drug stability and high-end equipment of LACDR to study this.

Within the Pharmacy Leiden unit, recently also two PhD students started, further strengthening the collaborative research between LUMC and LACDR. By joining the scientific networks of researchers at LUMC and LACDR, the building of bridges is also starting to be extended beyond Leiden. Pharmacy Leiden means joining hands of two top institutes in Pharmacy Research and Education in Leiden.