The seventh Satellite Meeting of the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology Education Section, known as IUPHAR-Ed, convened on July 11 and 12, 2026, alongside the 20th World Congress of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology. Across keynote lectures, rapid-fire presentations, short talks, workshops and posters, contributors examined educational contexts ranging from undergraduate bioscience to postgraduate health professions training.
The meeting’s most prominent theme was a decisive shift away from curricula centered primarily on knowledge acquisition and toward curricula that prepare graduates for increasingly diverse careers in academia, industry, government and healthcare. David Lewis, recipient of the Elizabeth Davis Teaching Excellence Award, argued in his keynote address that traditional didactic approaches alone are insufficient for contemporary pharmacology graduates. He presented educational approaches combining experiential, enquiry-based and collaborative learning with authentic assessment to develop the knowledge, skills and professional competencies that a widening range of career destinations now demands. His argument was reinforced throughout the meeting by presentations describing competency frameworks, outcome-based prescribing curricula, workplace-aligned assessment strategies and international efforts to identify the enduring concepts that underpin pharmacology education.
The practical consequence of this shift falls heavily on assessment. If curricula aim to prepare graduates to apply pharmacological knowledge in professional contexts, educators argued, assessments must evaluate how learners reason, make decisions and perform authentic professional tasks rather than simply what they can recall. Presenters described assessments in which students assume professional roles, make evidence-informed decisions, defend their reasoning and produce deliverables of the kind expected in the workplace. The University of Melbourne, for example, has students assume the role of Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration, reviewing preclinical data, evaluating safety and efficacy and making approval decisions about real and fictional drugs. At the University of Leeds, students critique flawed animal ethics applications, prepare their own regulatory submissions addressing scientific, ethical, legal and welfare issues, and role-play animal activists, welfare advocates and researchers from affluent and low-income countries in structured debates on animal use in drug discovery.
Other authentic assessment models presented at the meeting stretched further into professional practice. Leeds students produce grant proposals, policy documents, academic papers, business reports and e-portfolios designed to showcase workplace competencies, and complete assignments based on ICH S7A, the international regulatory guideline outlining nonclinical testing used to identify undesirable pharmacodynamic effects of new drug candidates before human studies. At the University of Alberta, students partner with DrugBank to curate pharmacokinetic and pharmacogenomic information from primary literature, evaluate AI-generated information and synthesize evidence into authentic drug dossiers. Monash University employs Objective Structured Practical Examinations, with stations assessing laboratory skills, data interpretation, verbal defense of decisions and explanation of concepts. At Swansea University, students generate original experimental data using the invertebrate Lumbriculus variegatus, participate in blinded multicenter studies and analyze their own findings under the direction of Aiden Seeley, recipient of the Outstanding Early Career Education Award.
These changes also reshape the learner’s role. Demonstrating competence in professional contexts, presenters argued, requires students to move beyond passive information acquisition into active participation in knowledge construction, inquiry and professional development. Project-based curricula encourage students to take roles within collaborative teams, develop outputs with real-world relevance, participate in peer review and contribute to solving complex scientific problems. Other presentations highlighted learners involved in developing educational resources, critically evaluating AI-generated content and selecting assessment pathways aligned with individual interests and career goals. Educators also stressed that assessment design should be inclusive, flexible and equitable, reflecting the strengths, needs and backgrounds of diverse learners so that all students can demonstrate their true knowledge, skills and potential while respecting individual differences.
A second recurring theme was that many institutions have moved beyond advocating for integrated curricula and are now grappling with implementation. Rather than debating whether pharmacology should be integrated into systems-based health professions curricula, presenters focused on the practical challenge of keeping the discipline coherent, visible and educationally meaningful within increasingly complex curricular structures. Educators identified common problems: fragmentation of content across organ systems, inconsistent sequencing of foundational concepts, redundancy without purposeful reinforcement, variable faculty expertise and assessments that inadequately evaluate pharmacological reasoning. Proposed solutions included intentional sequencing, faculty development, clearly articulated learning outcomes, integrated assessment and ongoing curriculum mapping. International initiatives such as the IUPHAR Core Concepts Project support these efforts by providing a common framework for curriculum mapping and longitudinal reinforcement, helping maintain the visibility of pharmacology within health professions education.
Generative artificial intelligence emerged as a third catalytic force, framed not as a replacement for educators but as a prompt for rethinking how pharmacology is taught, learned and assessed. Discussions moved past academic integrity concerns to a deeper point: the widespread availability of AI-generated responses now requires assessment approaches that reveal and evaluate students’ reasoning, conceptual understanding and professional judgment. Faculty from Macquarie University described a reflective AI-enhanced assessment in which students compare their own responses with AI-generated answers, identify misconceptions, consult the literature and refine their understanding. Colleagues from the National University of Singapore presented an educator-vetted workflow that uses AI to generate flashcards and formative assessment questions aligned with learning objectives and Bloom’s taxonomy, while emphasizing faculty oversight to ensure accuracy and pedagogical alignment. Student feedback suggested these resources improved understanding and confidence, though presenters cautioned that flashcards alone are unlikely to promote higher-order learning without opportunities for application and reasoning.
AI was also framed as a faculty development and institutional challenge. Workshop discussions highlighted the need to build educator AI literacy, provide institutional support and establish governance strategies for responsible curriculum integration. Faculty leading the Pharmacology Education Project, IUPHAR’s open-access educational resource, described future directions that may include AI-assisted content development supported by expert editorial oversight to maintain scientific accuracy and educational quality. The University of Sydney contributed a complementary institutional perspective, identifying the supports educators need to adopt AI responsibly, with the implication that successful integration will depend on faculty development and institutional infrastructure rather than technology alone. Collectively, presenters suggested that AI’s greatest educational impact may lie in forcing a redesign of learning and assessment around critical thinking, evidence-based decision-making and authentic professional practice, accelerating existing movements toward higher-order reasoning rather than merely accelerating information retrieval.
A fourth theme expanded the very conception of the pharmacologist’s role. While scientific expertise remains foundational, presenters emphasized that contemporary pharmacologists must consider the ethical, cultural, environmental and societal contexts in which medicines are discovered, developed, prescribed and used. A workshop on ethnicity in pharmacology education challenged participants to critically examine how race and ethnicity are represented in teaching and clinical decision-making, highlighting the limitations of using these constructs as proxies for genetic variation. A session on environmental stewardship introduced principles of green and sustainable pharmacology using the Understanding by Design framework, exploring how medicines affect the environment throughout their lifecycle from manufacture to disposal. Presenters also described PlanED Prescribing, a multi-institutional European initiative integrating planetary health into prescribing curricula through authentic clinical cases that ask students to weigh environmental impact alongside efficacy, safety and cost. Discussions further emphasized decolonization, diversity, equity and inclusion, urging educators to examine whose perspectives are represented in curricula and to address barriers to participation in global pharmacology education.
The meeting’s organizers were careful to frame the findings appropriately. The thematic synthesis presented was an interpretive account of the meeting, not a formal qualitative analysis or consensus statement, and the themes reflect presentations and discussions at a single international meeting rather than a comprehensive survey of pharmacology education worldwide. They represent, instead, recurring priorities identified by educators from diverse institutional and national contexts that may warrant continued exploration and evaluation. Even so, the overall picture was coherent: competency-based curricula define what graduates should be able to do, authentic and inclusive assessments determine whether they can do it, and learner-centered pedagogies provide the experiences through which those capabilities develop. Educational success, participants concluded, is increasingly defined not by what learners know but by their ability to reason, collaborate, exercise professional judgment and apply pharmacological knowledge responsibly within increasingly complex scientific, clinical and societal contexts. Notably, speakers argued that implementing these changes need not require wholesale curricular redesign; many highlighted approaches can be adopted by reframing existing learning activities and assessments.
Subject of Research: Emerging directions and international initiatives in pharmacology education discussed at the seventh IUPHAR-Ed Satellite Meeting
Article Title: Shaping the Future of Pharmacology Education: Emerging Directions and International Initiatives From the Seventh International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology Education Satellite Meeting
Article References: Guilding, C., Babey, A.-M., Charles, K., Cunningham, M., Exintaris, B., Fernandes, L. B., Hinton, T., Karunaratne, N., Koenig, J., Mackay, G., Restini, C., Szarek, J. L., White, P. J., & Karpa, K. (2026). Shaping the Future of Pharmacology Education: Emerging Directions and International Initiatives From the Seventh International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology Education Satellite Meeting. Pharmacology Research & Perspectives, 14(6), Article e70338. https://doi.org/10.1002/prp2.70338
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1002/prp2.70338
Keywords: pharmacology education, IUPHAR-Ed, competency-based learning, authentic assessment, generative AI, curriculum integration, environmental stewardship, health professions education, Melbourne, WCP 2026, Shaping, Future
News Source: Louis Brooks. (October 28, 2026). Pharmacology Educators Redesign Curricula for Competency, AI and Global Responsibility. Scienmag.
