Program Overview

Overview of the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences

The Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Tokyo is an academic field that covers the development of pharmaceuticals and their applications. The field encompasses fundamental, life-related substances and their interactions with life. The mission of the school is to achieve the highest standard in academic research as well as training and educating the future leaders in this field who will contribute to the development of pharmaceutical sciences and basic life sciences, leaders who can serve in medical administration, and pharmacists who can play an active role in the area of highly advanced medical care.

Comprising the two departments of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmacy, the school features laboratories covering a wide range of fields, including organic chemistry, natural product chemistry, analytical chemistry, physical chemistry, health chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology, drug delivery and pharmaceutics, pharmacology, genetics, and others.

The Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences has long been conducting leading-edge research in nearly all fields essential to drug discovery, and is now spearheading an initiative for establishing new methodologies for the science of drug discovery, creating new research fields unlimited by conventional boundaries in the midst of increasing global competition, and promptly applying new discoveries to drug development.

The school's program of education and research has focused on developing human resources for basic pharmaceutical science and drug discovery, but it is now expanding its focus to include medical pharmaceutics as well. This step is being taken to respond to new needs that are emerging from the increasing separation of pharmacies from clinics and from the expanding roles of pharmacists. And as bioscience continues to rapidly advance, it is vital to review the targets of drug discovery — diseases — from an entirely new viewpoint.

Japan's pharmaceutical education system changed in 2006, and a four-year system to train pharmaceutical researchers and a six-year system to train pharmacists were started. The school has also become more advanced and more proactive; in 2010 the school began offering a Master's program for graduates of four-year programs, and in 2012 it started offering a Doctoral program for those wishing to pursue doctoral coursework after completing the Master's program. Another Doctoral program for graduates of the six-year program was also started in 2012.

Departments

Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences (Master's program and Doctoral program)

• Students in this department will be engaged in research in the broad field of both basic and applied sciences covered by pharmaceutical sciences.
• The school offers a Specialty Course on Pharmacist Education in its newly established Doctoral program, which will allow students to obtain pharmaceutical certification (for graduates of the four-year program of the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences).

Department of Pharmacy (Doctoral Program)

• Students in this department will focus on not only clinical pharmacy education, but also training researchers with pharmacist certification.

Requirements and Application

• Required Japanese Level: The graduate school entrance exam only includes TOEFL-iBT testing. There is no Japanese language test included, but students are required to have basic Japanese conversational abilities.
• Application Distribution/Application Period:
  • Applications available: Mid March
  • Deadline for submission: Late June

Types of Degrees

• Master's degree: M.S. (Pharmaceutical Sciences)
• Doctoral degree: Ph.D. (Pharmaceutical Sciences, Pharmacy)

Research and Education

The school is like one big family, with a high rate of graduate school advancement, and graduates are active not only domestically but on the international stage as well. The school often holds sporting events, international student welcome and farewell parties, social gatherings, excursion trips, and hands-on cultural events to enable students to have relationships with other students outside of their field and to understand international viewpoints, which will give them much new insight into their field and lead to new research developments.

Since 2002, the school has been chosen as an initiative for "the Strategic Approach to Drug Discovery and Development" in the field of life science of the 21st Century Center of Excellence Program, collecting together the school's research resources and other schools and prompting organic collaboration and a variety of collaborative studies in the school. Starting in 2008, the newly developed Global COE Program adopted three projects which the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences participates in. By involving graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the projects, the school is fostering the next generation of pharmaceutical scientists who can be internationally active in any field. In 2010, the school's "International training program to establish world premier research center of the pharmaceutical sciences" was selected as one of the JSPS Fund's Institutional Programs for Young Researcher Overseas Visits. The program aims at intensive and effective training of graduate students and young researchers who will play an active part in the international academic fields of pharmaceutical sciences.