Master of Science in Molecular Medicine

The MSc course in Molecular Medicine conveys basic and advanced insights into the molecular basis of disease. The imparted knowledge and practical training should enable students to conduct biomedical research and medical biotechnology. To impart skills of experimental methods in biomedicine, the course offers comprehensive laboratory exercises. The curriculum responds to increasing demands of research institutions in molecular biomedicine. Scientists with pronounced knowledge in medicine and natural sciences are sought to fulfil these demands. Profound knowledge in molecular medicine will be provided in the modules Molecular Pathology, Molecular Pharmacology, Human Genetics, Clinical Chemistry/Molecular Diagnostics and Medical Biometry. For the advanced students in the second year, the course covers recent research achievements in molecular pathology and molecular pharmacology. The module Molecular Pathology provides basic knowledge about causes and treatments of main disease entities including cancer, cardiovascular, inflammatory, and neurological diseases. Different types of cell and tissue damage, and their histological correlates will be demonstrated with microscopic and macroscopic preparations. The module Molecular Pharmacology offers basic knowledge of common pharmacology and toxicology. The complex interactions between agents and their pharmacological targets in the human body will be explained. The module combines medical-pharmacological efficacy patterns of these agents with their molecular, cellular, and organ specific effects and functions. The module Clinical Chemistry/Molecular Diagnostics presents various topics of laboratory medicine and diagnostics, principles of frequently used clinical biochemical and molecular biological methods as well as instruments of diagnostic analysis, principles of step-by-step diagnostics for early diagnosis, course of disease, and therapy control. This includes a review of diagnostically relevant metabolic products and substrates, methods of point-of-care diagnostics, enzyme activity determination, diagnostic procedures in hemostaseology, and procedures for drug monitoring and diagnostic molecular biology. The module Medical Biometry explains the basics, fundamental terms and prerequisites for biomedical data analysis. In small groups students will be taught to use the statistical software package SPSS. The course includes basics of probability calculation, epidemiology, descriptive statistics, diagnostic tests, random variables, and selected distributions as well as concluding statistics (estimation procedures, significance tests, multiple test procedures, etc.)