(Open access funding provided by Semmelweis University)
The pharmaceutical medicine course at the Semmelweis University of Budapest, Hungary,
was initiated as part of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI is the main program, IMI-PharmaTrain is one of the IMI projects)
Pharmaceutical Medicine Training Programs (16 IMI Call 2008/1/16). The aim was to
extend training in the development of pharmaceutical medicine to those EU member states
where no such education was present. The final program envisaged the development of
a cooperative education supported by universities located in Central and Eastern Europe.
It was considered to be the economically and scientifically most viable approach to
combine the expertise from these countries to form a united teaching staff and provide
education jointly for young professionals of the region. Semmelweis University was
selected to manage this coordinated program. In this report, we describe the organization
and functioning of this international university-based pharmaceutical medicine education
project called the Cooperative European Medicines Development Course (CEMDC) and evaluate
its successes and shortcomings. During the pandemic, the educational course was interrupted.
The follow-on program is reorganized as a postgraduate MSc course named “Semmelweis
Pharma MBA” and will be started in 2025. It will continue the established PharmaTrain
educational tradition. However, it will deal in more detail with the transition from
basic pharmacological to industrial research, as well as biopharmaceutical formulation
and manufacturing and marketing aspects of medicines development.
