FRM5560 – New drugs and drug delivery in cancer therapy
Schedule, syllabus and examination date
Course content
The course aims to give the participants an overview of new drugs and drug delivery systems that are approved or under clinical evaluation for treatment of cancer. The treatment of cancer is today primarily based on surgery, ionizing radiation and chemotherapy. Despite several decades of attempts to optimize these treatment regimens the mortality and morbidity is still high for many cancer indications. This together with better understanding of cancer development has paved way for alternative drugs and drug delivery technologies with potentially better specificity and efficacy. These drugs may be devided into biotherapeutics, small molecular targeted chemotherapeutics and delivery technologies to improve specificity and efficacy of drugs. The biotherapeutics include monoclonal antibodies, immunotoxins, peptides and mRNA (for cancer vaccines), DAN (for gene therapy), and oligonucleotides (for gene silencing). The new small molecular targeted chemotherapeutics inhibits in most cases signal pathways which are important for the cancer cells to grow in an uncontrolled maner. Small molecular photosensitizing agents as used in photodynamic therapy and photochemical internalization exert their specificity through the light-directed activation of the photosensitizers.
Learning outcome
The main goal is to give the students a broad overview of the most important groups of new drugs and drug delivery systems for treatment of cancer. Drug design and mechanisms for therapeutic effects will be emphasized. The main principles for cancer development as basis for understanding the mechanisms of action of the drugs will also be presented.
Admission to the course
The course is primarily open for students who have been admitted to the Department?of Pharmacy at the University of Oslo. If there is space available then others may also apply to take the course as long as their academic background is adequate.
Formal prerequisite knowledge
No obligatory prerequisites beyond the minimum requirements for entrance to higher education in Norway.
Teaching
Lectures or study groups.
Access to teaching
A student who has completed compulsory instruction and coursework and has had these approved, is not entitled to repeat that instruction and coursework. A student who has been admitted to a course, but who has not completed compulsory instruction and coursework or had these approved, is entitled to repeat that instruction and coursework, depending on available capacity.
The course may be cancelled if the number of enrolled students are low.
Examination
4?hours written exam/oral exam depending on the number of students.
Examination support material
Casio FX-991EX calculators are handed out to all exam candidates at the beginning of the exam.
Language of examination
You may submit your response in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or English. Application for assignment text in English may be?sent?to studieinfo@farmasi.uio.no.
Grading scale
Grades are awarded on a scale from A to F, where A is the best grade and F is a fail. Read more about the grading system.
Resit an examination
This course offers both postponed and resit of examination. Read more:
More about examinations at UiO
- Use of sources and citations
- Special exam arrangements due to individual needs
- Withdrawal from an exam
- Illness at exams / postponed exams
- Explanation of grades and appeals
- Resitting an exam
- Cheating/attempted cheating
You will find further guides and resources at the web page on examinations at UiO.