Course info

Over the last 30 years, Biotechnology has had a major impact on human diseases of socio-economic importance. Molecular Medicine has traditionally been concerned with genetically inherited diseases. While this still represents an important part of biomedicine, molecular biology technology at both the genomics and proteomics level now impinges on infectious diseases and on other major non-infectious diseases such as cancer, heart disease and autoimmunity. The overall aim of this module is to provide an understanding of how basic gene and protein-based technologies, as covered in the core modules on the Masters course, are applied in human medicine, with particular emphasis on relevance to the Biotechnology/Pharmaceutical industry. The structured lecture course covers the molecular basis of illustrative disease types and Biotechnological applications in diagnostics and development of therapeutics. This module will also provide a clear appreciation of likely future Biotechnological developments in the post-genomics era.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:
To pass this module students will need to be able to:
1. understand the applications of gene and protein based technologies to human disease;
2. use illustrative examples, understand the molecular basis of human diseases of major socio-economic importance;
3. relate key developments in gene-based technology to disease diagnostics;
4. illustrate how Biotechnology research leads to the development of new therapeutics;
5. demonstrate a key range of skills including information acquisition from Web-based and library sources, self-learning, writing and presentation of scientific reports and genomics/proteomics-based problem solving.