UCSF School of Pharmacy

Center Overview

The Center is a Partnership

The Center for Pharmacogenomics is a major research partnership, which is led by the UCSF School of Pharmacy's department of biopharmaceutical sciences in partnership with the Program in Human Genetics in UCSF's School of Medicine. It is revealing new knowledge about the relationship between a person's genetic makeup and that person's response to medications.

It is now clear that genes can influence drug response. The question is how.

The goal of the Center for Pharmacogenomics is to discover the many hows associated with genetic response to medications and use this knowledge to:

• suggest more effective and safer prescribing policies
• improve drug development and research, and ultimately
• design more effective drugs with fewer side effects.

The Center for Pharmacogenomics is focused on leading this new science field so that patients benefit from discoveries in the lab as soon as possible.

Why at UCSF?

The new field of pharmacogenomics is attracting the attention and time of scientists worldwide. UCSF brings to the field a special background and set of experiences that scientists and clinicians here believe are unique.

The UCSF School of Pharmacy counts years of experience and accomplishments in the fields of biopharmaceutical and related sciences and in clinical pharmacy practice.

As a measure of the continuing excellence of its science, the UCSF School of Pharmacy receives more National Institutes of Health research funding than any other pharmacy school in the United States every year since 1979.

The Center for Pharmacogenomics is succeeding quickly as evidenced by the director's success in attracting major research funding to launch its laboratory science, funding to transform laboratory space to meet the special needs of the Center's research, and funding to support a new PhD graduate program, which trains tomorrow's leaders in the field.

The Center benefits from a close and essential working relationship with the UCSF School of Medicine's developing Program in Human Genetics and with academic colleagues throughout the state and nation.

The Center's ties within the School of Pharmacy to faculty colleagues whose science extends beyond the lab bench to more quantitative measures of drug response in patient populations and to the application of pharmacogenomics to direct patient care.

Why Now?

The Center for Pharmacogenomics is developing quickly now because the time is right.

With the sequencing of the human genome complete, Center scientists are exploring the function of genes and their proteins and how genetic variations -- called single nucelotide polymorphisms or SNPs for short -- among individuals can lead to differences in drug responses and ultimately to the development of personalized medicines.

Center scientists are now able to look at large patient populations with the goal of finding out more about the consequences of genetic variation for drug responses.

They are launching new educational programs to teach the next generation of PhD scientists and Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) health care providers to lead the field in the science and application of pharmacogenomics.

Go To: Center for Pharmacogenomics home page