Molecular Approach on Personalized

Code:

OPT22

Acronym:

MMMP14

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Medicine

Instance: 2016/2017 - SP

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Departamento de Biomedicina
Course/CS Responsible:	Integrated Master in Medicine

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
MIMED	25	Mestrado Integrado em Medicina- Plano oficial 2013 (Reforma Curricular)	2	-	3	27	81
			3

Teaching language

Suitable for English-speaking students

Objectives

Personalized medicine aims to provide precise and personalized diagnosis of patients, in order to conduct individualized therapy. It is in its early stages of implementation into European healthcare market and one of the main barriers to its development is the lack of knowledge among healthcare providers. Therefore, this curricular unit focuses on personalized medicine and integrates advanced molecular technologies, fundamental to its understanding. Educating medical students on the methodological science of genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics and molecular imaging techniques, will be essential to the development of new therapies that are targeted to the individual patient. Students will face this new healthcare paradigm and will be challenged to a theoretical implementation of the personalized medicine practice.

Learning outcomes and competences

The course unit comprises lectures, practical laboratory classes and discussion of papers in order to highlight the relevance of translational research as a basis for future personalized medicine, through the integration of advanced molecular methods in the identification of clinical, genetic and environmental variability. These sessions will give to the students the theoretical fundaments and technical aptitudes absolutely required to understand and discuss translational research in the area of personalized medicine and its application in future clinical practice. Thus, this unit intend to aware our future medical doctors for a medicine increasingly focused and customized to the person to improve global health care. 

Working method

Presencial

Program

1-The Future of Medicine: Molecules or Persons?

                Essential principles of Personalized Medicine

The patient as a genetic individuality

Clinical cases

Therapy based on molecular diagnostic

Challenges in Personalized Medicine

2- Molecular dissection of the patient

Technology platforms for genomic Medicine

Exome sequencing; Microarrays; “Single nucleotide polimorphisms” (SNPs);  ; genetic expression; epigenomics               

                Proteomics and identification of disease biomarkers

Protein array; mass spectrometry; isoelectric focusing ; bidimensional electrophoresis

                Molecular Imaging in Medicine

Fluorescence microscopy; live-imaging microscopy; Fluorescence resonance                       energy transfer (FRET) ; Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP)

3- Clinic Bioinformatics

Computational plataforms for Genomic Medicine (Genome browser, single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) database; International  HapMap Project )

4-Genetic manipulation on personalized therapy

Stem cells; Recombinant proteins; cell culture; Interference RNA; microRNAs

 

Syllabus- laboratorial classes:

-Clinical bioinformatics

- Genetic manipulation in human cell culture models

- Microscopic analysis and quantification of biomarkers expression

Mandatory literature

Kewel J.K; The textbook of Personalized Medicine, Spinger Eds., 2009

Complementary Bibliography

Huntington F. Willard & Geoffrey S. Ginsburg; Genomic and Personalized Medicine, Elsevier eds, 2012

Teaching methods and learning activities

The lesson plan comprises 11 lectures, lasting one hour each, and 5 practical classes, 3 hours each. These hands-on practical classes will always be supervised by a teacher. Students will be divided in 5 small groups to ensure adequate high-quality learning environment and practical classes will take place in a fully equipped molecular biology laboratory. Furthermore, students will present a scientific paper in a journal club session (1 hour) in order to evaluate their knowledge on molecular biology techniques and their critical thinking in the context of personalized medicine.  

 

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation without final exam

Assessment Components

Designation	Weight (%)
Prova oral	50,00
Trabalho laboratorial	50,00
Total:	100,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

Designation	Time (hours)
Frequência das aulas	11,00
Trabalho laboratorial	15,00
Total:	26,00

Calculation formula of final grade

The final grade is calculated from the score of the journal club presentation (50%) and from the continuous assessment of the student during the hands-on laboratory classes (50%).