Lindsey Elmore and Evan Clemens, student pharmacists from the UCSF School of Pharmacy, are national winners of the 2008 American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) Clinical Skills Competition.
Deanna Kroetz, PhD, UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member, has been elected as a fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS). Her election was announced during the November 2008 annual AAPS meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.
Leslie Z. Benet, PhD, UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member, received the 2008 Paul Ehrlich Magic Bullet Lifetime Achievement Award at the Second World Conference on Magic Bullets, which convened in Nuremberg, Germany, in early October. The award recognized Benet's scientific accomplishments in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. Benet was one of 7 recipients.
Research by UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member Lisa Bero, PhD, and UCSF colleagues Kristen Rising, MD, and Peter Bacchetti, PhD, have found that the information that is readily available to health professionals in the scientific literature on clinical drug trials is incomplete and potentially biased.
The path from scientific insight to a new drug used to treat patients is a long, expensive, inefficient, hazard-strewn obstacle course requiring many steps before the drug arrives at the pharmacy. Unfortunately, the specialists working at each of these steps do not necessarily have a clear vision of what goes on outside their own areas of expertise. As a result, they can be unaware of how the decisions they make impact other points in the cycle of drug or medical product development.
James Wells, PhD, chair, department of pharmaceutical chemistry in the UCSF School of Pharmacy, shares his thoughts on the need for increased public awareness about the ultimate value of science to health and the opportunities now presenting themselves to university scientists to become more involved in the basic science of drug discovery.
Scientists need to speak out now—as individuals and through advocacy groups—to educate the public about the importance of basic science research and to rally support for more funding, according to an October 3, 2008 editorial in Science.
The wider world use of medical tests and treatments based on individual genetic differences is the focus of a new, US$5 million research program funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and led by UCSF School of Pharmacy health economist Kathryn Phillips, PhD. The grant was awarded on September 16, 2008 and will be paid over three years.
UCSF biophysics PhD student Gabriel Rocklin and Jacob Heller, Stanford University law student, were first-place winners, with a second team, of the Science, Technology and Engineering Policy (STEP) White Paper Competition 2008 sponsored by the STEP Policy Group at the University of California, Berkeley (University of California, Berkeley).
Parents need to be accountable for medications in the home and discard unused medications, according to UCSF School of Pharmacy volunteer faculty member and pain management specialist Peter Koo, PharmD. His comments were in response to an annual survey released this year on August 14, 2008 by the National Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse.
Understanding protein folding is key to understanding what goes wrong in diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, that result when proteins misfold. UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty members Ken Dill, PhD, and Andrej Sali, PhD, comment on the history of and next steps in protein folding research.
PharmD Program reaccredited through 2014 and funding problems; Science Squad; Program for Investigation and Training for Careers in Health; Summer Science Camp; Huntington and Schweitzer Fellowship; #1 in NIH funding again; California Poison Control System at risk; tobacco ban legislation; Ambrose in Beijing; New faculty: Galonić Fujimori, Jorgenson, Ashton, Balano, Feigal, Hessol, Greenblatt; Wells succeeds James as chair, Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry; Youmans: appointed Associate Dea
An international list of 100 independent medical experts to whom journalists can turn for unbiased advice on how to interpret research studies and data was published online by the British Journal of Medicine on July 23, 2008. Named on this list is UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member Lisa Bero, PhD, an expert on the influence of corporate funding on academic research and on the unbiased evaluation of research studies.
UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty members support a proposed City and County of San Francisco ordinance that would prohibit San Francisco pharmacies from selling tobacco products. "Everyone knows that tobacco kills," says UCSF School of Pharmacy Dean Mary Anne Koda-Kimble, PharmD. "There is no place in a setting that promotes health to sell a product that unquestionably causes death and disease."
Historical underfunding of the UCSF School of Pharmacy, which has been exacerbated by successive California state budget cuts, threatens the School's ability to retain accreditation status of its doctor of pharmacy program, explains the School's dean, Mary Anne Koda-Kimble, PharmD. The School is the nation's top-ranked pharmacy school as measured by research funding from the National Institutes of Health and U.S.
Lisa Bero, PhD, UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member, looks at the potential benefits, risks, and ethical issues of different corporate/academic funding models. She also calls for a research agenda aimed at clarifying the effects of these relationships on research integrity, faculty attitudes, technology transfer, and research productivity.
In this series of regular reports, Sharon L. Youmans, PharmD, MPH, faculty member in the UCSF School of Pharmacy, shares her personal story during her 3-week research stay in The Republic of Malawi in southeastern Africa.
Through study results of a particular enzyme of unknown function, called Tm0936, that is found in a bacterium that lives in thermal vents in the Mediterranean Ocean, UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member Brian Shoichet, PhD and colleagues are shedding light on how to ultimately better predict the actions of enzymes involved in the discovery and development of drugs.
Ken Dill, PhD, professor and associate dean of research in the UCSF School of Pharmacy and international expert on theoretical approaches to determining how protein molecules fold, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). With this announcement, made by the Academy on Tuesday, April 29, 2008, Dill becomes the second NAS member of the School.
For the 29th consecutive year, the UCSF School of Pharmacy ranks first among US pharmacy schools in contract and grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), according to figures for fiscal year 2007.
The UCSF School of Pharmacy continues to rank #1 among Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) degree programs in the United States according to results of a survey conducted in 2007 and published online on March 26, 2008 by U.S. News & World Report.
Marilyn Stebbins, PharmD, faculty member at the UCSF School of Pharmacy, was hired in 1996 by a 120-physician group practice to control the cost of prescribing. That work evolved into a model for cost effective medication therapy management (MTM) by pharmacists who work closely with physicians. Stebbins is now applying her expertise to help California's underserved seniors get the best medication value for their money.
UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty members and students were recognized with three honors at the 2008 annual meeting of the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) held March 14-17, 2008 in San Diego, California. Mary Anne Koda-Kimble, PharmD (image right), dean of the School received the 2008 Outstanding Dean Award.
James A. Wells, PhD, an internationally recognized biochemist and leader in the development of new technologies for engineering proteins and for identifying small molecules to aid drug discovery, has been named chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the UCSF School of Pharmacy. His appointment is effective July 1, 2008.
Sharon L. Youmans, PharmD, MPH, UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member, has been named to the new position of Associate Dean of Diversity. The appointment was announced February 7, 2008 by School of Pharmacy Dean Mary Anne Koda-Kimble, PharmD.
Full story
UCSF School of Pharmacy Names First Associate Dean of Diversity
Brian Shoichet, PhD, School of Pharmacy faculty member and Brian Feng, PhD, former staff research associate with the School, and colleagues have discovered that many amyloid inhibitors, which scientists had hoped would keep "sticky" amyloid protein fibers such as those associated with Alzheimer's disease from aggregating in brain tissue, actually clump together themselves.
B. Joseph Guglielmo, Jr., PharmD, School of Pharmacy chair of the department of clinical pharmacy, comments on the last line of defense to the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a bacterium that has now spread from hospitals to schools, gyms, homes and beyond through human-to-human contact. Guglielmo is an expert in the drug treatment of infectious diseases and creator of the UCSF Medical Center's antimicrobial management program.
School of Pharmacy faculty member and computational biologist Andrej Sali, PhD, and international colleagues have developed new techniques to reveal the architecture of large protein complexes within cells. Their ultimate goal is to see how these complexes interact in real time—however fleeting the encounters.
