Groningen University Institute for Drug Exploration (GUIDE)

The Groningen University Institute for Drug Exploration (GUIDE) is the largest graduate school and a leading institute for innovative drug research in the Netherlands . Within GUIDE scientists receive training for a future carreer in drug research, development and evaluation. The graduate school has a special training programme for PhD students, in addition to a comprehensive research programme. GUIDE is accredited by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

The research groups that participate in GUIDE are from the University Medical Centre (UMCG) and from the Department of Pharmacy (Faculty of Science and Engineering; FSE). They are organised in nine so-called research divisions, which are based on scientific profiles. Each division has its own scientific programme.

Pharmacy groups participate in three expertise-related divisions:

• Synthesis & Analysis
• Biopharmaceuticals, Discovery, Design & Delivery
• Pharmacoepidemiology & Drug Policy

Medical groups are clustered in six disease-related divisions:

• Transplantation, Immunology and Inflammation
• Oncology
• Renal Diseases
• Liver, Gastrointestinal and Metabolic Diseases
• Cardiovascular Diseases
• Asthma/COPD

In expertise-related divisions also preclinical researchers from the UMCG participate. Various pharmacy groups participate with a part of their research in disease-related divisions, such as liver research, asthma research and oncology.

The overall GUIDE research programme is based on the concept that the entire process of drug development takes place through interaction between knowledge of diseases and their molecular biological background on the one side, and knowledge of therapeutically active substances and their molecular mechanism of action on the other side.

GUIDE offers to its PhD students a multidisciplinary training programme. Each PhD student has period of four years to fulfill the PhD project. During this period a tailor-made training programme is followed. This yields the GUIDE certificate at the time of defence of the thesis, indicating that the PhD student received training in drug research in the broad sense of the word.