Astropharmacy & Astromedicine
| Code | School | Level | Credits | Semesters |
| PHAR3026 | Pharmacy | 3 | 10 | Spring UK |
- Code
- PHAR3026
- School
- Pharmacy
- Level
- 3
- Credits
- 10
- Semesters
- Spring UK
Summary
This optional module will introduce the field of astropharmacy and astromedicine. Astronauts, as well as Antarctic explorers, submariners, and many in similar extreme environments, face serious challenges in receiving safe and effective medical care. It is known, for example, that how the body processes medications, the effectiveness of drugs, the susceptibility of bacteria to antibiotics, blood volume, muscle mass, bone density, visual acuity (to name but a few) change in spaceflight. If humans are to work in space and widen exploration to planets such as Mars, then a new paradigm of providing remote medical care is required. This module will focus on the known changes to biology, physiology, pharmacology and pharmacokinetics and dynamics that occur in flight. It will explore hypotheses for why these occur and facilitate discussion on the design of experiments that may be undertaken to study these effects. It will encourage forward thinking as to how safe and effective pharmaceuticals may be manufactured and delivered to these patients, and then how such advances may impact upon the role of the pharmacist, e.g. in testing, companion diagnostics and personalized medicine, training and in regulation.
Target Students
Module only available as an elective to Pharmacy and MSci/BSc Pharmaceutical Sciences students (Year 3), including those on an exchange programme. There is a limited number of places on this module. Students are reminded that enrolments which are not agreed by the Offering School in advance may be cancelled without notice.
Assessment
- 100% Presentation: Small group oral presentation within a worskhop session
Assessed by end of spring semester
Educational Aims
By the end of the module, students should be able to critically evaluate a variety of biomedical changes that occur at different timescales in spaceflight. They should also be able to relate how the development of new technologies, such as synthetic biologies and additive manufacturing, may be used to address the pharmaceutical challenges of providing safe and effective care in extreme environments. By the end of the module the students should have an appreciation of the benefits that meeting these challenges has on global healthcare systems and the implications of this in the role of the pharmacist.Learning Outcomes
Appreciation of biomedical changes in spaceflight
Appreciation of the consequences, both short and long term, of the biomedical changes in spaceflight
Able to critically evaluate a variety of manufacturing and formulation technologies
Experimental design
Deductive reasoning
Problem-solving ability
I.T. Skills
Written/oral communication
Information Retrieval and analysis
Library and Literature Searching
Conveners
- Prof Phillip Micheal Williams