The Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences has only one specialty—Therapeutic Medicine and Pharmaceutics—and is dedicated to producing specialized clinical pharmacists through a two-year Master’s Degree Program and research specialists in basic pharmaceutical sciences through a two-year Master’s Degree Program followed by a three-year Doctoral Program.
In addition to the standard Basic Course, the Clinical Course was recently created in the Master’s Degree Program with the help of teaching staff from the Graduate School of Medicine and its affiliated hospitals. The mission of the Clinical Course is to train pharmacists in a more interdisciplinary and integrated manner.
Students in the Basic Course select one of 16 research fields and are required to write a Master’s thesis; the Clinical Course students are required to enroll in clinical courses and acquire training in clinical facilities, including those at Toho University.
The Doctoral Program has been offered since 1996 and is designed for pharmacists who want to complete their doctoral dissertations while remaining employed, so that they may benefit from both their study of clinical health sciences and their practical training in clinical facilities.
Accompanying the shift in undergraduate education to a six-year program, the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences will be reorganized. A graduate from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences will now proceed directly to a four-year Doctoral Program, thereby skipping the two-year Master’s
Program. The Doctoral Program trains scientists in the fields of basic science. It also trains clinical pharmacists who want to complete their doctoral dissertations while employed.