News & Announcements

Strategic plan progress report. Research: Driving the development of innovative and precise drugs, medical devices, and diagnostic tests. Flu treatments; Tackling antimalarial resistance; Attacking hard targets; Plotting cell maps; Safer opioid pain killer; Cellular construction; New products through bioengineering; Regulatory science leadership; Tobacco burden in vulnerable populations; Economics of disease; Precision medicine. Education: Preparing leaders who think critically, work across fields, and lead in rapidly changing marketplaces. PharmD curriculum for 2018 and beyond; Transforming teaching; Coursework in regulatory science and translational medicine; Interdisciplinary exposure. Patient Care: Reframing how medication needs of patients are met. Importance of health information exchange; Outcomes research; Treating patients with more precise medications. People: Supporting our agents of change—our faculty, staff, and alumni. New faculty leaders; Housing and child care; Staff support and engagement; PharmD admissions; Unconscious bias. Framework for Success: Ensuring the School has the framework needed to excel. Support for enabling technology centers; Philanthropic support; Online presence.

Ching C. Wang, PhD, a beloved UCSF School of Pharmacy researcher and professor, known for bringing molecular biology and biochemistry to parasitology, and for his work on the antiparasitic medicine ivermectin, died last week at the age of 80. To his wide circle of colleagues and friends, he was known simply as “C.C.”

“Find a need and fill it” was a popular slogan that graced the side of pink Kaiser Cement trucks around the San Francisco Bay Area in the 60s and 70s. But Donald Kishi, PharmD ’68, took the motto as his professional mantra.

How do we give patients ready access to the expertise of pharmacists? How do we empower patients with medication knowledge?

With a pharmacist dad and a degree in biochemistry, Meghan Frear was certain that pharmacy school was a perfect fit for her. However, she says, “When I first entered UCSF, I could not have articulated for you that I wanted to be a systems-level pharmacist.” “In undergrad I took an economics of health care course, which sounds so nerdy,” Frear recalls. “But that's what really got me excited—there are these big problems and there are ways that we can solve them [despite] limited resources, and I can do this with pharmacy.”

Tina Ling was born in a refugee camp in Thailand after her parents fled the genocide in Cambodia. Growing up in Southern California in an immigrant-rich community, she saw her parents and many of their neighbors struggle with their new country’s language, culture, and economics—including access to health care and health literacy.

After earning her PharmD, Pong Dahl completed a year-long residency at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, focusing her elective rotations in ambulatory care. She is now the supervisor for ambulatory care pharmacy services for the John Muir Physician Network (part of John Muir Health), which includes more than 1,000 primary and specialty care physicians in the East Bay.

Nation debates possibility of dramatically new directions for health care coverage, science funding, immigration, education; Revealing malaria/HIV drug interactions in children; Decreasing cancer drug toxicity while increasing dose; Engineering safer opioids; Evidence for comprehensive medication management; Medicare Part D as a learning model for pharmacy education—impact 10 years out; New genetic insights into diabetes drug response; Annotating the ‘dark genome’; Epigenetics of ethnicity; New endowed professorships made possible by private support; New Center for Cellular Construction; Major funding for UCSF-Stanford CERSI; 2017 Mary Anne Koda-Kimble Seed Award for Innovation; Welcoming the class of 2020; Three generations at the School of Pharmacy; Developing a curriculum for 2018 and beyond; AFPE honors Frank Szoka as Mentor of the Year; 2016 Chancellor Diversity Awards honor Marcus Ferrone and Peace Chukudi; Eddie Way celebrates 100 years; CPhA Hall of Fame honors Brian Komoto, Phillip Oppenheimer, Wilma Wong; $500M gift to campus from Helen Diller Foundation; UC statement on federal executive order restricting travel and entry.