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The Pharmaceutical Sciences CAG brings together more than 1,850 staff and students from each of the partner organisations within King’s Health Partners, with the aim of improving practice, research and education in pharmaceutical sciences. It includes a variety of professional groups, including pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, pharmacy assistants, scientists, healthcare professionals, undergraduate and postgraduate students and administrative staff.
Our CAG draws together all aspects of the use of medicines, from drug discovery through first-in-man studies, through to formulation technology and prescribing safety to post marketing pharmacoepidemiology (the study of the uses and effects of drugs in large numbers of people).
Our range of services includes pharmacy departments at Guy’s and St Thomas’, King’s College Hospital and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts, the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science at King’s College London, a pharmaceutical production facility at Guy’s Hospital, King's Health Partners Clinical Trials Supplies, the Medicines Information Centre at Maudsley Hospital and the Toxicology Unit at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
We work closely with specialist services such as cancer, cardiovascular and emergency services. Working across our acute and community sectors, we are maximising beneficial outcomes for our patients from medicines, through medicines optimisation.
This sees our CAG focusing on safety, governance, professional collaboration and patient engagement in the formulation, prescribing and research into medicines.
Our CAG runs several education and training programme for healthcare professionals and pharmacy and pharmacology students. They include:
- A four year MPharm degree;
- BSc Pharmacology, Pharmacology with Molecular Genetics;
- an MSc degree in Pharmaceutical Medicine;
- MSci Integrated Pharmacology and Physiology for Research;
- a pre-registration training year for pharmacy graduates, which includes working across King’s Health Partners;
- international paediatric pharmacy internships;
- a clinically-enhanced independent prescribing course for pharmacists and nurses;
- a postgraduate research programme (PhD) embedded in IPS across the three research groups: Drug Discovery, Drug Development and Medicines Use.
Staff in our CAG contribute to a large number of courses that are run at King’s Health Partners including undergraduate medicine and postgraduate medical specialty courses. Academics in our Institute of Pharmaceutical Science provide substantial teaching in a wider range of undergraduate and postgraduate taught course delivered within teaching departments in:
- pharmacy;
- pharmacology;
- biochemistry;
- physiology.
Key achievements in education include:
- Our MPharm degree was re-accredited by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) for the maximum six years, with no conditions or recommendations;
- King's College London Pharmacy and Pharmacology ranked 20th in the world in the 2023 QS World University Rankings by subject.
Our research is governed by the need of clinical practice. Increasingly, collaborative research with NHS colleagues forms a major part of our work, producing 250 full research papers since the CAG's inception, including papers in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) and The Lancet. We have established a PhD programme for NHS pharmacists and scientists, with 14 doctorates already awarded and eight still in progress.
The Institute of Pharmaceutical Science has wide ranging expertisethat reflects our ‘bench to bedside’ expertise from drug discovery, drug development through to medicines use in the real-world.
Members of our CAG have a multiplicity of collaborations with industry that have led to the award of research grants, consultancy agreements, Collaborative Awards in Science and Engineering (CASE) studentships, knowledge partnerships and the setting up of their own companies.
At any one time, King’s Health Partners Clinical Trial Pharmacies supports around 650 clinical trials of medicinal products. We collaborate across all pharmacy units in the partnership to support this clinical research. We aim to be a centre of excellence for providing pharmacy services and drug management solutions for clinical research. We review all clinical trials of investigational medicinal products as part of an approval process for research and development in each of our partner trusts. We also work with researchers to ensure clinical trials are set up efficiently and provide support in designing effective trials.
Our clinical academic group has dissolved artificial boundaries between research, practice, teaching and training, and between the NHS and academic. Our clinicians teach, our researchers practice and our teachers research. This structure is enabling us to attain our key strategic goal of assuring the translation of research findings related to drugs and medicines into practice as quickly as possible, which ultimately benefits our patients who safely receive the right medicine, in the right formulation at the right time.
Prof David Taylor, Leader of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Clinical Academic Group
Pharmaceutical Sciences Clinical Academic Group Leader
Prof David Taylor, Professor of Psychopharmacology, King’s College London; Director of Pharmacy and Pathology, South London and Maudsley NHS FT.
