Course Contacts:

Course Coordinators:

Dr Jacqueline Hannam

(j.hannam@auckland.ac.nz)

​​

Dr Malcolm Tingle

(m.tingle@auckland.ac.nz)

​

Course Directors:

Dr Rachel Cameron

(r.cameron@auckland.ac.nz)

 

Mr Liam Anderson (Senior Tutor)

(l.anderson@auckland.ac.nz)

 

Basic Information:

 

Date: Semester One 

Location: Grafton Campus (Lectures and Labs)

Pre-requisites: Must have done 204 and two of BIOSCI 203, MEDSCI 203, MEDSCI 205

Restrictions: Must not have done MEDSCI 306, MEDSCI 303 and MEDSCI 321

 

Official UOA Course Curriculum: https://study.auckland.ac.nz/ords/r/uoa/catalogue/course?p6_code=MEDSCI%20318

 

This is a required course for those enrolled in the Pharmacology Major and Medicinal Chemistry Specialisation

 

Course Breakdown:

 

To pass this course you must:

 

Achieve a minimum of 45% in each of the four assessment types:

 

1. Workshop Assessments - 5%

2. Laboratories - 25%

3. Mid-semester test (15%)  and End-of-semester assignment (5%) - 20% 

4. Final Integrated Assignment - 50% (there is no final exam)

 

You must also: 

• Achieve a minimum of 50% of the available marks overall 

• Attend at least 75% of the laboratory sessions

 

Course Overview:

 

This course builds on the foundational pharmacokinetic and drug toxicity principles that were taught in MEDSCI 204. It considers the biochemical processes that are required to achieve clinically relevant drug concentrations that will result in therapeutic effect and drug toxicity from absorption, distribution and elimination (ADME) and how these processes are described (pharmacokinetic modelling). This course also considers other important factors such as drug-drug interactions (DDI’s), pharmacogenetics, dosing and pharmacokinetic considerations in particular populations that could affect therapeutic effect and drug toxicity.

 

Workshops:

 

The pharmacology courses are quite fond of their workshop classes, and as someone who has taken these classes, they can be very beneficial. There is one workshop every week and workshop attendance and participation is “highly recommended”, however technically they are compulsory as they do take attendance and are not always guaranteed to be recorded but it will not be the end of the world if you miss one. These workshops are typically geared as a way to help you with the assignments as they come! Things covered in workshops include things such as numeracy skills (so helpful if you are a little weaker in math i.e. such as myself), lab report preparation, mid-sem test feedback, and information on the final integrated assignment (essential to attend, I’ll touch on this more later)! Towards the end of the semester, they became a little more career focused with guest speakers, in 2025 we had guest speakers from Pfizer and a past student working currently in pharma! 

 

There are 5 workshop assessments, all worth 1% each. They aren’t too difficult and don’t take too long to complete, so this a good place to bank your marks. Each assignment will be explained in the corresponding workshop (not all workshops have an associated assessment).

 

Laboratories:

 

There is one 2-hour lab every week. There are 3 types of assessments associated with labs. The most notable assessment that is different from the expected assignments such as pre-lab quizzes and lab reports, is the 3% Lab Practical Assessment which is pass/fail, that is done in week 1. In week one this is considered the “bootcamp” and it teaches you to make a fit-for-purpose standard curve that meets the acceptance criteria for standard curves based on simplified ICH guidelines. If your standard curve doesn’t pass you will have other opportunities to pass. Lab 11 is another dedicated lab just for the standard curve. There are also other lab experiments throughout the semester that require you to make a fit-for-purpose standard curve and if it meets the criteria you can ask for it to be counted towards your 3%. 

 

Other than this assessment, there is 0.5% pre-lab quiz for every lab (there is a pre-lab task sheet to help you complete these) and 3 written lab reports. The written lab report looks a little different to what some of you may be used to as you are only required to write a results and discussion section (where both have a strict word count). Lab Reports 1 and 3 are each worth 5% of your final grade. For Lab Report 1, 70% of the marks are allocated to the results section and 30% to the discussion. For Lab Report 2, this weighting is reversed, with 70% allocated to the discussion and 30% to the results. Lab Report 2 is worth 8%, with marks distributed equally between the results and discussion sections (50% each).

The marks are structured this way to help you first develop strong data presentation skills, and then progressively strengthen your discussion writing.

Some labs are intended solely to reinforce and deepen your understanding of the lecture material and results produced are not required for a lab report (has potential to be asked in the mid-sem test but won’t be asked explicitly as a “lab” question but more so your knowledge from the lab could help you answer the question). Labs 3 and 4 are for Lab Report 1, which is the one-compartment model, Lab 5 and 6 is for Lab report two - Species differences in CYP, UGT and GST (enzymes) and Lab 8 and 9 is for Lab Report 3 - AMES test.

 

Lectures: 

 

Most of your lectures will be taught either by Jaqui or Malcolm, with one guest lecturer, Dr Nuala for pharmacogenetics. 

 

The lecture's content is split into part 1 and 2, where each part has a different focus.

Part 1 focuses on content that revolves on working towards first in human drugs, so main topics include ADME, pharmacokinetics, safety testing, DDIs and Genotoxicity. Part 2 focuses on content to help understand PK and drug toxicity in target populations. This includes PK in the clinical setting, pregnancy, neonates, disease states and pharmacogenetics, teratogenicity etc. 

 

Jaqui mainly handles the pharmacokinetics aspect of this course. This includes ADME, general PK and PK in special populations etc. Jaqui is an excellent lecturer, she’s fun and enthusiastic and her explanations and slides hold a lot of detail which was very helpful. She’s very easy to approach so don’t be shy!

 

Malcolm is our other lecturer for this course, and he handles most of the drug toxicity lectures in the course. Malcolm is also a good lecturer but might take some time getting used too as he has quite the humour but once you get past that he is also very enjoyable to learn from. His slides do have quite a bit of content that might not always be 100% relevant so you will need to learn how to pick out what is actually important and relevant to understand. Malcolm does also tend to go on tangents so you might want to review the lecture content more than once to pick out actual examinable information. 

 

Final Integrated Assignment:

 

Unlike many MEDSCI courses, this course has a final assignment instead of a final exam that is worth 50% of your final grade. 

 

This assignment is split into two parts, and is released once exam season starts (end of week 12). You will have 1 question from each lecturer, a PK based question from Jaqui and a drug toxicity based question from Malcolm. Each will be worth 25% to make up the total 50%. This assignment is quite challenging, and will require a lot of time and effort to complete. Time management is essential here as you will also need to prepare for other assessments for your other courses. Most of my time was spent looking for primary literature and reading them to formulate my answers. One other thing about this assignment is that you will not have access to the lecturers for help to complete this and this will be solely based on what you have learnt in the lectures throughout the semester so make sure you have a sound understanding of the lectures so that when it comes to the assignment you will understand the content you will be reading in the literature and will have a better idea of what to look for.

 

Course Review:

 

Overall this course is an enjoyable course but also a challenging one. All of the staff, from Malcolm and Jaqui and our course coordinators Rachel and Liam are super helpful, friendly and great to be around in the lecture room and the labs. They are all very supportive and will help you with any questions you may have and will feel like a close community. This course can also feel very overwhelming and may feel like there are never ending assignments so make sure to stay organised and keep on top of your assignments and reach out to your peers if you ever need help!