Many types of lung cancer thwart even the most targeted of therapies due to drug resistance, but a group of UCSF scientists led by Sourav Bandyopadhyay, PhD, have now shown that adding a second drug into treatment regimens can overcome this resistance in lab-grown, lung cancer cell lines.
Ortiz de Montellano gained renown for his work with cytochrome P450 enzymes, which help the liver metabolize drugs and other chemicals, and regulate hormone levels.
In a pair of recent studies, scientists at the Quantitative Biosciences Institute uncovered how Ebola, dengue, and Zika hijack human proteins to infect human cells, findings that point to new approaches for treating these diseases.
Tuberculosis is usually treated with a six month regimen of daily antibiotics, but millions of patients do not recover from the disease during treatment. Rada Savic’s team showed that adjusting the duration of this regimen based on disease severity could lead to better outcomes.
Drug discovery today begins with computation rather than test tube experimentation. Three School of Pharmacy faculty emeriti, Robert Langridge, Irwin “Tack” Kuntz, and the late Peter Kollman, were awarded the UCSF Medal for creating computational tools for drug discovery that are now used worldwide.
Curriculum transformation, An expanded role, Gaining recognition, Graduate match rate; School of Pharmacy scientists receive UCSF Medal: Founding fathers of drug discovery honored; Beyond drugs, Two artificial pancreas projects, Bringing prosthetics to patients; Beyond drugs, Two artificial pancreas projects, Bringing prosthetics to patients; Advancing the fight against cancer, Combining drug therapies, Mapping cells; In memoriam: Robert D. Gibson
A lifetime of pharmacy and advocacy
The patient perspective on prosthetic limbs currently doesn’t factor into the FDA approval process. Leslie Wilson and Matthew Garibaldi are surveying patient preferences to speed access to the next generation of prosthetics.
School of Pharmacy Vice Dean Sharon L. Youmans, PharmD, MPH, was inducted into the UCSF Haile T. Debas Academy of Medical Educators in September, in recognition of her leadership during the School's revamping of its PharmD curriculum.
UCSF’s Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI), founded two years ago, is making waves with its unique approach to scientific collaboration, catalyzing discoveries from cancer to psychiatry while supporting female scientists and engaging with the public.
Inspiration can be a hard thing to find. The history of science is filled with elusive “eureka moments” taking place under unlikely circumstances—Archimedes’ jump in a bath to intuit displacement, Issac Newton’s observation of a falling apple to grasp gravity, and Nikola Tesla’s inspiration for the electric induction motor, which came as he was observing a sunset in a park and quoting Faust. In the halls of UC San Francisco, sometimes inspiration comes knocking on the door.
The School of Pharmacy's newest cohort of PharmD students donned white coats and took the Oath of a Pharmacist at the 2018 White Coat Ceremony, committing themselves to a lifetime of learning and patient care.
Kathy Giacomini, PhD, an expert in pharmacogenomic transporter biology and regulatory science, is the 2018 Bill Heller Mentor of the Year Award recipient from the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education (AFPE) for her mentorship of students.
The award recognizes university faculty members, nominated by their students and current or past AFPE Fellows, for their guidance, dedication, leadership, instruction, and encouragement.
Michelle Arkin, PhD, has received the 2018 Breakthrough Science Initiative Award from the Ono Pharma Foundation to study a class of proteins, called 14-3-3 proteins, known to be involved in various cancers, with the ultimate goal of enabling discoveries that lead to new ways to treat cancer.
A beloved educator and alumnus of the UCSF School of Pharmacy, Robert D. Gibson, PharmD ’58, died on July 19 at the age of 93. Gibson had an illustrious career over five decades at UCSF and was a strong national leader for diversity in the pharmacy profession.
Medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the U.S., trailing cancer and heart disease. Many of those errors can be traced to issues with medications.
By diligently tracking the medications that each patient takes, and bringing trained pharmacists into the fold of everyday patient care, our health system could be made more effective and safer, UCSF School of Pharmacy Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, explains in a recent article for The Conversation.
A new class of UCSF doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) students came together on July 25 at the Parnassus campus to inaugurate a new curriculum built on critical thinking, problem solving, and an inquiry habit of mind.
Cancer, fundamentally, is a problem of too much growth. For decades, health care providers have tried and failed to slow tumor growth using drugs that interfere with a particular signaling pathway, called PI3K, which is known to operate in proliferating cancer cells.
If it’s hard to take an accurate census of the 325 million people living in the US, it’s even more daunting to survey the 37.2 trillion or so cells that make up the human body. The brain alone, for instance, contains nearly 90 billion neurons, which can be classified into over a thousand distinct cell types. But these numbers are informed estimates—the true diversity of cells in the brain, let alone throughout the body, remains out of reach.
Health at the molecular level: Decoding cellular signals, A trigger for tissue repair, Seeding tomorrow’s science. The future of custom care: Tracking cancer drug resistance, Treating malaria and tuberculosis, Quantitative Biosciences Institute’s culture of inclusivity, The genetics of asthma. Ensuring the best possible care: Using the right drugs, Keeping up with the testing boom. Update on the new PharmD curriculum: Welcoming our new students at the end of July. And more.
Despite using opioids for centuries for pain management, we still don’t have a complete understanding of how drugs like morphine and oxycodone actually work. And that’s a problem for patients, who must weather side effects that can range from nausea and constipation to cognitive impairment, addiction, and, at high doses, even death.
Katherine Gruenberg, PharmD ’15, BCPS, a faculty member in the UCSF School of Pharmacy’s Department of Clinical Pharmacy, was awarded the 2018 Sustainability Award in the faculty category by the UCSF Academic Senate Sustainability Committee on June 27, 2018.
Sessions include: quickly identifying molecules that show potential as drugs; improving access and treatments for AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis; why curiosity and imagination are taking the place of memorization the PharmD curriculum. Honoring the Class of 1968. Kennedy receives Distinguished Alumnus of the Year Award.
On June 2, 2018, Kathleen B. Kennedy, PharmD ’78, received the 2018 Distinguished Alumnus of the Year Award from the UCSF Pharmacy Alumni Association, for her “outstanding contributions to the profession of pharmacy, to society, and/or to UCSF.”
As the dean of the College of Pharmacy, Xavier University of Louisiana, she has been a national advocate for lessening health disparities by strengthening the underlying health of communities.
Aashish Manglik, MD, PhD, the newest member of the faculty of the UCSF School of Pharmacy’s Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, was named a Pew Biomedical Scholar on June 14. The award supports early career faculty members who have demonstrated “outstanding promise as contributors in science relevant to human health,” and provides each awardee with $300,000 over four years to help them get their growing labs off the ground.
The Beckman Young Investigator award provides research support to the most promising young faculty members in the early stages of their academic careers in the chemical and life sciences.
Conan MacDougall, PharmD, was recently selected for the Emerging Teaching Scholar Award by the American Association of Colleges Pharmacy (AACP) Council of Faculties.
Every day, on average, ten new genetic tests become commercially available to help doctors and patients make more informed decisions about health care.
A new PharmD curriculum; Implementing new practice opportunities for pharmacists; PharmD students shine in state and national clinical pharmacy competitions; A pioneer in pharmacogenomics; The NIH streak lives on; Improving adverse event reporting and medication therapy protocols; Big-data to cut drug discovery time; Computational approaches target dopamine receptors; Researchers expose industry manipulation of science by sugar industry; Women in science; more.
