Drug stories: Lessons from the past and now

This unit immerses you into real-life challenges and triumphs associated with drug discovery, using case studies of medicines from the nineteenth century through to COVID-19 vaccines. Working in groups and individually, you will develop a framework for evaluating any drug development scenario, including all stages of the development and approval pipeline, and marketing. Considerations of ethical and sustainable practice will be applied to each case. 

You will investigate four drug stories via information provided, combined with your own inquiry, and evaluate each case using your new framework. You will present your evaluations, including comparisons between drug stories, via oral and written presentations and debates. At the completion of the unit, you will have a deep understanding of the key challenges of drug development and a refined conceptual framework that you can use to evaluate novel examples of drug development you encounter in future.