Master of Drug Discovery and Development

Gain the skills required to generate therapeutics for improving human or animal health with this intensive one-year taught programme, unique in New Zealand.

Your studies will combine the biological sciences with chemistry, giving you the skills to target, design, synthesise, create, and assess new drugs. Learn how to identify drug targets and develop these into new therapeutics. Develop skills to protect intellectual property, assess the financial viability of drugs, and consider the path to pre-clinical and clinical trial processes.

Tailor your studies to your strengths, interests, and career goals. You'll learn a mix of academic and practical skills that are closely aligned with the needs of industry.

The Master of Drug Discovery and Development is best suited to capable students with a background in chemistry or relevant science-subjects such as biochemistry, biomedical science, pharmacy, or pharmacology.

To be accepted into this programme you will need to meet:

A Bachelor's degree in Chemistry or relevant life-science subjects such as Biochemistry, Biomedical Science, Pharmacy or Pharmacology, with an average grade of B+

To be accepted by the programme director as capable of proceeding with the proposed course of study

Proof of English proficiency

To be accepted into this programme you will need to meet one of the following:

IELTS: minimum overall score of 6.5 with no sub-score below 6.0

TOEFL: minimum score of 90 for the internet-based test with a minimum of 20 in writing

Pearson Test of English: minimum score of 58 (with a ‘Communicative’ score of not less than 50)

EPP: minimum final scores of 4,4,5,5

Application Deadlines - Trimester 1: 1 Dec and Trimester 2: 1 May.