About Us

The Department of Pharmacology is one of the pre-clinical departments in the University’s Medical Sciences Division and is based in the University’s science area in the centre of Oxford. 

The Department houses around 220 researchers, postgraduate students and support staff, and has excellent facilities. The members of the Department, associated staff and visiting scientists are all engaged in the investigation of basic questions concerning the interaction of chemical substances with biological systems.

Research in the Department is focused on cell signalling, cardiovascular pharmacology, ion channel and molecular pharmacology and neuropharmacology. In many of these areas the Department plays a leading role in the international pharmacological community. The research of the Department has consistently been given a very high ranking in the Government’s assessments of research in Universities and was rated first in the UK, within Biological Sciences, in terms of quality (ie greatest volume of 4* work) and volume (the power ranking) in the recent Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise.