Topics and Expertise: drug discovery and development

The bacteria in the human gut that produce antibiotics are the focus of a US$1 million W. M. Keck Foundation grant being led by Michael Fischbach, PhD, a faculty member in the UCSF School of Pharmacy.

Michael Fischbach, PhD, is the recipient of a 2010 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health. Fischbach is a faculty member in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, UCSF Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine.

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...

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...

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...

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...

The odds of finding a chemical compound that can be developed into a drug are not good, says Thomas James, PhD, chair of the UCSF School of Pharmacy's department of pharmaceutical chemistry, but those odds can be improved by university scientists.

UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member James Wells, PhD, director of the Small Molecule Discovery Center, describes his approach, which uses precise, sophisticated matchmaking techniques, to improving the success rate of finding chemical compounds with the potential to become drugs.

Full story...

The Center for Drug Development Science (CDDS), located in Washington, DC, has joined with the UCSF School of Pharmacy to advance the safe and effective use of drugs.