Message from the Dean

Thank you for visiting the website of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Okayama University. This website contains information on the history, purpose, educational programs, research areas, achievements, events, and students of our Faculty, which is expected to give you an insight of the current status and activities of our Faculty.

Our purpose is twofold: to educate and train specialists who will someday work in the drug discovery sector and become excellent pharmacists, and to use research as a tool to develop pharmacologically important and effective products aimed at improving human health care. The Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences was founded in 1969. Since then, more than 2,900 Bachelor of Science (B.S.), 1,600 Master of Science (M.S.), and 300 Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees have been awarded. Our graduates are actively working in various capacities at national institutes, universities, pharmaceutical companies, food and chemical companies, government offices, hospitals, and pharmacies.

Our Faculty offers two programs: pharmaceutical sciences and pharmacy. The former program is designed for students who wish to become drug discovery specialists and researchers in pharmaceutical sciences, using organic chemistry, analytical chemistry, biophysics, biochemistry, pharmacology, and molecular biology as tools. The bachelor's degree in pharmaceutical sciences is a four-year course, and the master's degree and the doctorate degree are two- and three-year advanced study courses, respectively. The pharmacy program is offered to students who wish to become pharmacists. Six years of study are required to acquire a bachelor's degree, and a four-year advanced study program is offered for the doctorate degree. The details of these programs can be found in the website.

Recently, the Faculty's buildings were renovated and laboratory instruments were replaced with state-of-the-art models. At the same time, our educational programs were extensively revised. In this new ambience, we are pleased to welcome you who are interested in pharmaceutical sciences.

I would like to invite you to join our Faculty where you will certainly find an area of great interest that you can avidly pursue.

Yoshinori Moriyama
Dean, Division of Pharmaceutical Sciences,
Graduate School of Medicine, Dentistry, and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Okayama University

Outline

GOALS and OBJECTIVES

1. Teaching basic and applied pharmaceutical sciences and technology
2. Training in the skills necessary to properly accomplish the social mission of pharmaceutical sciences
3. Contributing to social development through research on pharmaceutical sciences

The general purpose of pharmaceutical education in Japan is not only to train pharmacists in the administration of medical treatment but also to instill in researchers and technologists a broad knowledge of the fields relevant to pharmaceutical science. The Pharmaceutical curricula thus include various fields of life science and many schools and institutes have opted for the title "pharmaceutical sciences" over the more traditional "school of pharmacy" to reflect this broad-based approach.

Practically the Okayama University faculty members carry out the above objectives, as shown in the Lectures & Practices, and graduating students find employment in a variety of locations: pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, diagnostic laboratories, public research institutions, educational institutions etc.

In addition to completing lectures and practices, undergraduate are obliged to complete a senior thesis during their fourth and final school year. Each student is given a research topic. Outstanding theses are published in scientific journals pertinent to the specific field. More than half of the graduating students enter the graduate school's master's degree program (2 years), and some of them go on to the doctoral program (3 years) after the receiving master's degree.

The master's program is administered along with the undergraduate program in the Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology of Okayama University (GSNST-OU), but the doctoral program under GSNST-OU is an independent unit cooperatively managed by five natural science faculties : Science, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Science & Technology and Agriculture.

GSNST-OU is composed of the following six interdisciplinary and comprehensive divisions: Science & Technology for Materials, Science for Engineering & Agricultural Technology, Bioresource Science, Biopharmaceutical Science, System Science and Science & Technology for Intelligence.

All staff of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences belong to the Division of Biopharmaceutical Science. Organization of other graduate schools and institutes of Okayama University is shown in the appendix.

Education in our Faculty has been fully devoted to pharmaceutical sciences, but slightly lacking in the teaching of practical clinical pharmacy. Therefore, the Medical Pharmacy Division was added to the master's program of the graduate school in 1995.

The Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences (FPS-OU) is composed of 18 chairs, and research is conducted in greatly varied areas. The projects and recent publications of the faculty are listed below. The high productivity of our faculty was attested to in Nature in 1994 (31:125).

FPS-OU was established in 1969 as a department of the Medical School with seven chairs and was separated from that unit in 1976. The history of the Faculty is as follows:

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