BMS participates in a collaborative program with other UCSF graduate programs to offer a spring quarter curriculum designed around mini-courses formatted as intensive, round-table discussions of current literature on specific topics.

The quarter is divided into three modules of two to three weeks each with programs offering several mini-courses choices per module. Students enrolled in the BMS program must take one mini-course per module for a total of three mini-courses.
Two of the selections must be chosen from the BMS list, and the third may be chosen from other program offerings depending on availability. BMS mini-courses include translational, single disease or organ systems topics. Topics will change every year.

The following Spring 2010 mini-course selections are currently being planned. The module for each course, as well as exact dates and times, will be announced in Winter 2010.

• Cellular Stress Responses in Disease Processes: Stem and Somatic Cell Biology - Thea Tlsty
• Neuro - Oncology - David James, Russell Pieper
• Angiogenesis and Vascular Biology - Matt Springer, Rong Wang
• Principles & Implications of Oncogene Addiction - Martin McMahon, Davide Ruggero, Scott Oakes
• Autoimmune disease:  genetic susceptibility, cellular mechanisms and potential new therapies - Tony DeFranco with Michelle Hermiston, Qizhi Tang, others.
• Hematopoiesis and Leukemia Biology - Emmanuelle Passegue
• Disease Discovery through the Lens of Genetics  - Jane Gitschier, Bob Nussbaum, Elad Ziv
• Bioinformatics - Mark Voorhies