UCSF School of Pharmacy

Pharmacogenetics of Membrane Transporters Project

As principal investigator for a four-year, US$11.9 million research grant, UCSF Center for Pharmacogenomics Director Kathleen Giacomini, PhD heads a team of 20 scientists studying the pharmacogenetics of membrane transporters, which are the cellular "gatekeeper" molecules that interact with a third of the most commonly used prescription drugs.

The award was the largest of nine made by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), a program within the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in the first phase of a major new pharmacogenetics research initiative.

The team is focusing on variants in transporter genes that underlie the response to many frequently used drugs, including responses to antidepressants and anticancer drugs. Researchers will test the performance of these transporter variants in cell cultures, and finally, clinical researchers will determine if people with those variants respond differently to drugs in a clinically significant way.

Learn more about the project:

• UCSF Web Sites
  • UCSF Pharmacogenetics of Membrane Transporters Program
  • UCSF Computer Graphics Laboratory, Pharmacogenetics of Membrane Transporters
• The Pharmacogenetics Knowledge Base
  PharmGKB
• NIGMS Web Site
  Pharmacogenetics Research Network
• NIH Press Release
  First Awards Made in NIH Effort to Understand How Genes Affect People's Responses to Medicines

Go To: Center for Pharmacogenomics home page