Study fee

The study fee for an SBE pre-master’s programme is half of the tuition fee for an SBE master’s programme, as the pre-master's programme lasts one semester. 

Please note that the study fee for applicants with a non-EU/EEA university degree is yet to be determined. More information will be published as soon as possible. 

Read more about tuition fees

Eligible students

• Students with a related university of applied sciences bachelor’s or master's degree (EU/EEA)
  • Related UoAS programmes in the Netherlands
  • Related UoAS programmes in Flanders
  • Related UoAS programmes in Wallonia
  • Related UoAS programmes in Germany
  • Related UoAS programmes from other EU/EEA countries: please submit your application. The Board of Admissions will check your eligibility.
• Students with a related or unrelated university bachelor’s or master's degree (EU/EEA or non-EU/EEA)

Non-eligible students

• Students with a non-EU/EEA university of applied sciences degree
• Students with an unrelated EU/EEA university of applied sciences degree 
   

Questions?
Please contact SBE Admissions Office
masteradmissions-sbe@maastrichtuniversity.nl

Additional requirements: handling fee

Applicants for this pre-master's programme who received their previous education in a non-EU/EEA country will have to pay a handling fee. More information on this handling fee and how to arrange this payment can be found on the Handling fee web page.

How to apply

Ready to apply? The application and enrolment process consists of three phases. More information on each of these phases is provided below. Carefully read through the information provided and make sure to complete all tasks as soon as possible (and definitely before the indicated deadlines).

Master application

In order to start the master’s programme in February, it is important to successfully complete your period 2 examinations in the first sitting. When you fail the first sit in period 2, you will not be able to continue the master's programme in February.

The resits of period 2 courses take place in the second semester (period 4, April).

Before Goessens fell ill, he was a motorcycle salesman and worked fifty or sixty hours a week. Because of the tremors (shaking) and stiffness in his limbs, in combination with stress, that unfortunately became increasingly difficult. He has since been declared unfit for work and is a house husband; he and his wife have swapped roles. In order to supress the symptoms, he took more and more pills—fourteen a day at one point. “And the effect of that medication fluctuated throughout the day. That’s how Deep Brain Stimulation came into the picture.”

Two holes in the skull
He certainly did not immediately jump at the idea of two holes being drilled in his skull. He studied up on exactly what DBS meant using the internet, and also learned that animal research had been done prior to introducing this method. “That’s not nice for those animals, of course, but it helped me tremendously. Without DBS, I would no longer be functioning like I am now. I can do the housework and take care of myself. Otherwise, I would have needed care a long time ago. My quality of life has improved enormously.”

As if a light was switched on
During the seven-hour operation, he was kept conscious so that doctors could continually monitor him to make sure no other brain areas were damaged and to determine the right location for the two electrodes. The moment the electrodes were in the right place and tested for the first time, it felt for Goessens “as if a light had been switched on. Insane!” The amount of electricity in his brain is regulated through the neurostimulator in his stomach (recently the batteries were replaced for the first time in an outpatient procedure). He can also adjust it a little himself with a remote control.

A difference of night and day
In order to further improve the method and possibly help future Parkinson's patients, Goessens is happy to participate in scientific research into DBS. “Recently, the stimulation was switched off during such a study. That was a difference of night and day.” Although DBS greatly helps to suppress the symptoms, it is not the answer to Parkinson's disease. Unfortunately, that persists. “I have now also received some medication because I have regressed a little bit over the last four years. But I’m staying positive.”

So far, more than two hundred thousand people suffering from Parkinson’s disease have received an implant that helps them stop shaking. The impact on their quality of life is enormous, Prof. Temel knows from real experience. “And it would not have been possible without first testing the effect of DBS on motor, cognitive and emotional behaviour in animals. Testing cognitive skills in rats is not easy, but many aspects of their emotional behaviour are not that different from how humans react.” His own PhD research showed that DBS also affects feelings of depression in rats.

How can you tell if a rat is depressed?
Temel: “Normally, a rat likes drinking sugary water or eating sweets, for example. If it’s depressed, it doesn’t. Or, normally, a rat would swim if you put it in water. A depressed rat doesn’t swim, but drifts. And if you give them Prozac, they will improve.”

Why do you choose to use rats for this type of research?
Temel: “Because it’s the smallest animal species in which we can monitor this type of behaviour. It’s impossible to tell if a fruit fly is depressed. For research on DBS, we need to observe the intact brain and behaviour—a paradigm that also exists in patients—to make the validity of our findings solid. And there’s already so much data from similar animal research to compare results with. If you would stop animal research and leave that all behind, it would take another ten to twenty years to generate this amount of data again.”

Linden: “The alternative models for our field of research are still very limited. There are some cellular models, but they haven’t reached the level of maturity that you would need to draw meaningful conclusions. But the number of animals is being reduced and the number of people benefitting is increasing.”

So how is MHeNs addressing the three Rs of Replacement, Reduction and Refinement?
Linden: “We generally cannot model new treatments entirely in silico or in cellular models, so complete replacement is not possible yet, unfortunately.” Temel: “If a true scientist uses animals, I’m sure he or she has no alternatives. I see them as my patients and I treat them as well as I can. If I see the difference in the number of animals used in an experiment nowadays, compared with fifteen years ago, we have substantially reduced. This is simply because we take a closer look at control groups that are absolutely necessary for a study and because we check if previous results in a similar study can be reused.”

So completely stopping animal research, or outsourcing it to China, is not an option?
Linden: “At the moment, we are legally required to test new drugs in animals, and we need it for the further development of existing treatments and for a better understanding of the early stages of brain development. There won’t be any medical progress or innovation in care in these areas without animal models.”

Temel: “We once considered doing this kind of research in China, but we found out that the ethical standards are quite different there. The number of animals used in a study was enormous, for example. Animal research is ‘a necessary evil’. I’m convinced that good regulation is far better than a complete stop.”

What if the Dutch government indeed bans animal research in the country?
Linden: “The big question then is: will they allow new drugs in the Netherlands if their development has been based on animal models? If they do, one could question the sincerity of the whole approach. If they don’t, they will deny the population access to new important drugs. I don’t see alternative models replacing animal research completely for the next couple of decades. We think it is justified by its medical aims. It also takes place within a very tightly regulated framework (and rightly so) and we have full confidence in our colleagues who do the hands-on work and share our researcher’s agenda: to do the minimum amount of animal research for the maximum effect for patients.”

What is DBS, or neuromodulation?
A deficit in electric currents in our body can lead to brain or nerve cells communicating with each other poorly or not at all. By placing an electrode in a given area of the brain or spinal cord, where our movements are controlled, you can administer additional current and improve the communication between the cells. The result: Parkinson's patients stop shaking and incontinent patients can be rid of their disabling problem. The electrodes are connected via subcutaneous wires connected to a subcutaneous pacemaker with a battery that delivers continuous power. The properties of the current (quantity, frequency, etc.) can be set from outside. That is, quite simply explained, the principle of ‘neuromodulation’.

Fundamental or translational research?
Fundamental research generates new ideas, principles, and theories, which may not be immediately applicable, but form the basis of progress and development in different fields. This type of research rarely helps practitioners directly with their everyday concerns; nevertheless, it stimulates new ways of thinking that have the potential to dramatically improve how they deal with a problem in the future. Translational research builds on fundamental scientific research, for example, to create new therapies and medical treatments.

The quality improvements of the future facilities
Teubner is responsible for the daily operations and compliance with legal regulations at the Maastricht University facilities and he also focusses on organisational improvements. A major quality improvement will be realised with the new BMC building. “Our current facility is in an old building, where workflows are not always optimal. For example, we have several decentralised labs where highly specialised interventions (cardiologic, oncologic etc.) are performed on our animals. For this, the animals have to be transported from the Central Animal Facility to these labs. This may result in added stress for the animals. In the new BMC, nearly all activities that are now decentralised will come together in one building, resulting in tremendous improvement with respect to the pre-/post-interventional care and wellbeing of the animals.”

The three pillars of the new building
It’s not that the current building is not functioning, Teubner stresses. “It’s fully operational and complies with the laws, but since its start the field of Lab Animal Science has developed quickly. For example, nowadays so-called air showers ‘clean people off’ when they enter a lab animal facility, and help maintain the facility’s high health and hygiene standards. These cannot be implemented in the old building due to technical constraints. So with the new building, we can increase the efficiency and the quality of work, and can decrease the amount of stress on the animals. Those are the main three pillars for the new building.”

How housing conditions really are
The housing of lab animals has been a subject of research for many decades. Starting from a situation where husbandry was characterised by more or less empty cages and boxes with the fewest number of distractions, nowadays lab animals can live according to their species-specific habits in cages or stables that contain nesting material, hiding locations, and also toys at their disposal.

“Most lab animals are social animals and, according to the law, have to be and are housed in groups, except when there is a very good reason not to, like after an operation. Of course, such a life is not as challenging as in nature, but having food and water, nesting, shelter and environmental enrichment at their disposal, lab animals can live a life that fulfills all their basic needs. I think it’s not as bad as some people apparently think! We’re open to showing how our animals live here at the Maastricht Central Animal Facility. Employees from UM and MUMC+ are welcome to take a tour, since there’s nothing to hide.”

Compared to animals killed for meat consumption
In discussions about animal welfare, Teubner often compares the number and the quality of life of animals sacrificed for scientific research to those killed for consumption. “In Germany, where I’m from, about 3 million lab animals used for scientific research are euthanised each year. 85% of these are rodents. On the other hand, 60 million pigs are killed annually for food production in Germany, and about 720 million chickens. They are sometimes housed and killed under terrible conditions. In comparison, our lab animals have privileged living conditions”, he says.

Why it is necessary to use animals in research
Every year, all institutions that use animals for research are required to report how many animals of each species that have been bred, used and euthanised. The Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (nVWA) publishes those numbers in official publications like ‘Zo doende’. In Maastricht, mice, rats, rabbits, pigs, sheep, goat, zebra fishes and sometimes guinea pigs are used in experiments.

For Teubner it’s clear, that you cannot perform research on humans to the extent that you can on animals. “Besides the ethical discussion regarding experiments on humans, the genetic diversity of human society doesn’t allow for systematic research, for example, of genetic diseases. With animals, you can have groups with the same genome, like identical twins, which makes it much easier and more reliable to discover and describe the function of a specific gene or medication.

Besides the significance of lab animals in basic research”, Teubner adds, “think about the animals that are used to test new surgical techniques, new supporting devices like heart pumps and new medications. This field of translational medicine often better mirrors the dilemma we are in: Who wants to take the untested medication first? Who wants to be the first patient in which an untested device will be used?”

Why research does not have to have an immediate application per se to be valuable
Of course, he says, you can’t mirror a human in a fruit fly, and maybe not in a mouse either.  “Most often we cannot recreate human disease 1:1 in rodents. But the mouse or rat, as a model, allows us to get a glimpse into the function of a special gene, for example, if it plays a role in liver cancer. The simple rationale is to identify the mechanisms through which molecules and genes normally function when it comes to certain diseases.” According to Teubner, the positive results of animal research have not been stressed enough in public debate thus far: all the medicines, new surgical techniques, or even ‘just’ new knowledge that have been developed. “The things scientists discover today may have no apparent relation to a current problem, but maybe they will in 20 years. I think it’s a danger to biomedical science and science in general to expect all research to be of direct benefit to us.”

He gives the example of the British scientist John Gurdon, who received the Nobel Prize in 2012 for his work on frog eggs. In 1962, he cloned frog egg cells, after which molecules were able to be identified that were important for the development of the cells into a living frog. These studies laid the groundwork for the discover of many molecules that are important for the development of cancer. “But back in 1962, people thought Gurdon was crazy. ‘What is he doing with those frog eggs?!’, they said. Therefore, we should keep in mind that the value of research should not only depend on the possibilities for immediate application, but that scientific success builds upon earlier results, and also asks for patience.”

Who actually says that you are obliged to use laboratory animals?
“The Dutch and European governments. If you think you’re on the right track towards a new potential drug, you can’t immediately test it in patients. That also seems sensible to me. I don’t think anyone wants to expose their healthy family member to a heart attack for research purposes. First, according to the law, you must demonstrate in two different animal species that it indeed works. And then again in two animal species that it’s not toxic. Every medicine in the pharmacy has therefore passed through four animal species—from ADHD medication to statins for high cholesterol or creams for eczema, as well as the antacids and painkillers that you just buy in the supermarket nowadays. ALL the medications we have now have been tested on animals.”

Is there anything meaningful to say about when alternatives will be sufficient?
“A minister from the previous cabinet once said that the Netherlands should be free of animal testing by 2025. I find that a naïve remark, which fortunately has now been nuanced. Suppose Europe would stop animal testing now. Then all this research and the accompanying biotech industry, which is big in the Netherlands, will move to a different part of the world. It could go to China, for example, where they look at animal welfare very differently. Do we really want to ‘wash our hands’ of it this way? I find that unethical. The reality is that if we want to contribute to the further improvement of healthcare, animal testing is indispensable. That goes for a vaccine against q fever, which the Dutch government is now urgently searching for, or better chances of survival for people with cancer or cardiovascular disease. Anyone who has lost a loved one to this type of disease wonders if a better treatment can’t be developed.”

What, for example, have you achieved with the help of laboratory animal research?
“In addition to DNA, we also have RNA in our body: macromolecules in which hereditary characteristics are recorded. In mice with heart disease, we saw ‘overexpression’ of a certain RNA molecule, meaning that it was overrepresented. We looked at biopsies of hearts of people who had died, and we saw exactly the same thing. In our lab, we then developed a medication that can slow down that RNA. When we administer that to mice with high blood pressure and heart disease, their hearts recover. The next step was to test it in a larger laboratory animal. In Portugal, we found a group of surgeons who had experience with this type of research in pigs. The pig hearts also did very well on our medication. The next step is toxicity testing, whether it has a poisoning effect. For this study, which may potentially contribute to the treatment of heart disease caused by aortic valve stenosis or high blood pressure, a total of five pigs and about one hundred mice have been used so far.”

Do you find that number to be low?
“Everything depends on the context, of course. If you consider that people put out mouse traps at home and that the shelves in the supermarkets are full of pork every day, for which pigs are not always kept or slaughtered in a pleasant way, I think that’s justifiable. We don’t do it to torment animals, but for safety. If it could have been done with fewer, we absolutely would have done it because we’re very conscious as scientists of the three R's that we strive for in the Netherlands: Reduction, Refinement and Replacement of animal testing.”

If it all needs to be reduced anyway, why invest in a new building?
“Because animal testing is still necessary and legally required for the time being, and the Maastricht facilities are outdated. They comply with the legislation, but they can be so much better, also for the animals. As project leader of the new Biomedical Centre, I’ve made sure that things have been running smoothly for the past two years: that the wishes of researchers, managers and animal caretakers were translated well to architects and that we stayed within budget.”

Are you afraid of intimidation by anti-animal testing activists?
“Of course, I sometimes think about that. I find it hard to understand why people threaten you because you’re doing your work—because you want to eliminate cancer or heart failure. I actually think it’s cowardly and incomprehensible, like preventing paramedics from doing their job. If you’re really against animal testing, you can vote for the Party for the Animals, for example. If that party then receives a majority in the upper and lower houses of parliament and passes legislation that prohibits animal testing, then animal testing is prohibited. This is how a democratic society works. But then I would really like to hear from that party how we can achieve breakthroughs in the treatment of Alzheimer's, brain tumours and more.”

What can you expect from UM students?

• they are equipped with a solid mix of academic knowledge and have a hands-on mentality, enabling them to make a smooth transition from their studies to your organisation
• they are trained to provide solutions for real-life issues and are use to working in teams. Both elements are key tenets of our innovative education model Problembased Learning which teaches our students the practical application of theory and provides them with excellent analytical, project management and communication skills
• they are accustomed to working in our Interational Classroom, the  tutorial groups in which they work and study with people from different cultural backgrounds and learn to approach issues from a variety of perspectives. This makes them well-prepared for the rapid changes in today’s globalising labour market
• our students and graduates are up to speed with the latest techniques and developments in your field