Rifkind award winners (clockwise from upper left) Tony Huynh, PharmD; Alan Chuang, PharmD; Jaekyu Shin, PharmD; Michelle Shen, PharmD.

By David Jacobson

Studies of whether patients are taking a blood thinner as prescribed, whether antibiotic treatment of cancer patients’ fevers matches guidelines, and whether one form of a leading cardiovascular drug increases the risk for a serious side effect took top honors at the Department of Clinical Pharmacy’s 15th annual Spring Research Seminar.

The poster session, covering a total of 42 projects and highlighting research by UCSF School of Pharmacy student pharmacists, residents, and faculty members, was held on May 6, 2013 on the Parnassus Campus.

Winners of the 6th annual Gary Rifkind Spring Research Seminar Awards are:

• Student pharmacists Alan Chuang, PharmD, and Tony Huynh, PharmD
• Resident Michelle Shen, PharmD
• Junior faculty Jaekyu Shin, PharmD

Shuvo Roy, PhD, with silicon wafer and bioartificial kidney model Image: © majedphoto.com

The San Francisco Chronicle and the Bay Area News Group, which includes the San Jose Mercury News and Oakland Tribune, have published feature articles this week focused on The Kidney Project, an effort to develop the first implantable bioartificial kidney to treat end-stage renal disease.

The project seeks to replace dialysis and replicate the vital functions of a healthy kidney with a surgically implanted device the size of a coffee cup. The multi-institution research is being led by Shuvo Roy, PhD, a faculty member in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, a joint department of the UCSF Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine.

More:

Kidney designers take cues from nature - San Francisco Chronicle

Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine - Oakland Tribune

“Genes and Health: Moving Beyond Race,” shows how Burchard’s lab is using differences in the ancestry of asthma patients to help find genetic variations contributing to the disorder, the most common chronic disease in children.

Burchard is a faculty member in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, a joint department of the UCSF Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine.

Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD Image: © majedphoto.com

Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, an honored UCSF professor and mentor as well as a leading pharmacist and clinical scientist specializing in antimicrobial therapies, will be the new dean of the UCSF School of Pharmacy.

His appointment, officially announced today by UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann, MD, MPH, after being approved by UC President Mark Yudof, will take effect April 1.

By David Jacobson

Kathryn Phillips, PhD

Improving technologies are rapidly cutting the cost of whole genome sequencing, a process that reveals the complete library of a patient’s genetic information. Indeed, the era of the $1,000 genome—a catchphrase for the test’s relative affordability—appears imminent.

But will the wider application of this encyclopedic option in personalized medicine help patients and health care providers prevent and more effectively treat diseases, or will it open a Pandora’s Box of confusion, fears, and costly, unnecessary treatments?

Adam Abate, PhD

By David Jacobson

Physicist Adam Abate, PhD, who applies microfluidics technology to speedily process millions of encapsulated biological samples to discover drugs, engineer proteins, and diagnose cancers, has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award.

The prestigious award, which provides $750,000 in funding over five years, supports junior faculty who “exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research … and the integration of education and research.”

Abate’s awarded project will develop new technology—massively-parallel ultrahigh-throughput single-cell sequencing—to allow scientists to determine the genetic make-up (genomes) of each individual cell in samples as large as a million cells in just a few days. It will also allow researchers to analyze each cell’s transcriptome (transcribed RNA) which reflects which genes are active.

James Lightwood, PhD

California tobacco control efforts that cost $2.4 billion over nearly two decades reduced health care costs during that same period by $134 billion, according to a new study co-authored by UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member James Lightwood, PhD.

“These health care cost savings began to appear almost immediately after the program started and have grown over time, reaching more than $25 billion a year in 2008,” said Lightwood, a faculty member in the School’s Department of Clinical Pharmacy.

The California program combining aggressive anti-smoking ads with community programs started after voters passed Proposition 99 in 1988, which increased cigarette taxes by 25 cents per pack to fund it.

The new study, published in the online journal, PLOS ONE, updates an earlier one with an additional five years of data and a more sophisticated economic analysis.

More:

California’s Tobacco Control Program Generates Huge Health Care Savings

Ryan Hernandez, PhD

Ryan Hernandez, PhD, whose lab studies patterns of genetic variation from populations around the world, using detailed computer modeling to learn more about human evolutionary processes and to discover regions of the genome vital to function and underlying disease, has been named a 2013 Alfred P. Sloan Research fellow.

The prestigious two-year fellowships provide $50,000 in funding and “seek to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise.” The Sloan Foundation supports science, technology, and economic institutions.

Hernandez is a faculty member in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, a joint department of the UCSF Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine, and is also affiliated with the Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) and the Institute for Human Genetics.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Faculty of the UCSF School of Pharmacy will train Safeway supermarket pharmacists to help their customers quit smoking, using a curriculum originally developed at the School.

The new partnership with Safeway Inc. marks the first time a smoking cessation intervention has been applied systematically across a network of pharmacies.

Under the program, the School will train pharmacists based at 20 California supermarkets in a streamlined version of Rx for Change, the tobacco-cessation curriculum created by faculty in the School’s Department of Clinical Pharmacy to guide health care providers nationwide in evidence-based clinical interventions to help patients quiet smoking.

The initiative includes a three-month study by School researchers to assess the impact of trained pharmacists in stores enacting an “Ask, Advise, Refer” model—screening for smoking when filling prescriptions, advising customers on medications to help them quit, and referring them to a helpline.

The project is expected to expand over the coming year to include hundreds of Safeway pharmacies across the country.

More:

UCSF-Safeway Pharmacy Alliance Aims to Help Customers Quit Smoking

Leslie Benet, PhD Image: © majedphoto.com

During his illustrious half-century career, UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member Leslie Benet, PhD, has authored more than 400 peer-reviewed publications, many helping to define the field of pharmacokinetics—how the body absorbs, distributes, metabolizes, and excretes medications—or as he once put it, “what the body does to the drug.”

Now a Benet paper examining how the uptake of certain types of drugs by cells in the liver is affected by toxins resulting from chronic kidney disease (CKD) has won the Ebert Prize, the oldest U.S. pharmacy award.

Lisa Bero, PhD Image: Cindy Chew

How well do states’ policies address possible conflicts of interest of committee members who decide which drugs get Medicaid reimbursement? The question looms especially large as impending federal health care reform increases the number of patients covered by the state-run drug formularies.

A new study co-authored by Lisa Bero, PhD, faculty member in the UCSF School of Pharmacy's Department of Clinical Pharmacy, and published online today in JAMA Internal Medicine, finds wide variations in such conflict-of-interest (COI) policies that suggest some may not adequately protect against pharmaceutical industry influence.

Shuvo Roy, PhD, with silicon wafer and bioartificial kidney model Image: © majedphoto.com

Research at the UCSF School of Pharmacy to develop the first implantable bioartificial kidney recently received exceptional private support: $1 million from the family of the late philanthropists Harry and Diana Hind, and $50,000 from the Patterson Barclay Memorial Foundation.

Both gifts provide major ongoing support for The Kidney Project, a national effort to create a long-term treatment for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) via a surgically implanted device the size of a coffee cup that will carry out the vital functions of a normal kidney, from filtering waste to regulating blood pressure.

Lisa Bero, PhD Image: Cindy Chew

An updated and expanded review of clinical research papers on drugs and medical devices finds that industry-sponsored studies are more likely to lead to favorable results, including reports of greater benefits and fewer harmful side effects.

The analysis of 48 published studies, covering conditions ranging from heart disease to psychiatric illnesses, also found that industry-funded papers were more likely to report conclusions that were inconsistent with their own results sections.

The article, “Industry sponsorship and research outcome,” is co-authored by Lisa Bero, PhD, a faculty member in the UCSF School of Pharmacy’s Department of Clinical Pharmacy. It was published in the December 12, 2012 issue of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Bero co-directs the UCSF-based San Francisco branch of the U.S. Cochrane Center.

As a follow-up to a 2003 analysis also co-authored by Bero, the new paper looked at more than double the number of studies, used more stringent methodology, and added medical device studies.

More:

Industry Funding Changes Study Results, Research Shows

Mary Anne Koda-Kimble, PharmD Image: © majedphoto.com

Writing in the current issue of the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association (JAPhA), Mary Anne Koda-Kimble, PharmD, looks back on the seismic shift in the treatment and expectations of women in clinical and academic pharmacy over the last four decades.

She also calls for a continued emphasis on policies promoting work-life balance for both women and men, especially “as technology has dissolved the traditional physical boundary between home and work.”

In her Viewpoint column, “Rising Women,” Koda-Kimble, who retired as dean of the UCSF School of Pharmacy in June, revisits her own 1975 article, “The Sleeping Women,” which noted that many female student pharmacists at that time were conscientious but not career oriented.

Helene Levens Lipton, PhD, a faculty member in the School of Pharmacy’s Department of Clinical Pharmacy, posed this and other questions in a video interview with former U.S. Senate majority leader and health policy expert Thomas Daschle.

Daschle, who advised President Obama during the development of the health care law and is now a senior policy advisor at the law firm DLA Piper, visited UCSF in October 2012 as part of the Chancellor’s Health Policy Lecture Series. Lipton is also a core faculty member at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, UCSF School of Medicine.

Video source:

A Conversation with Thomas A. Daschle: A New Paradigm for Health Care in America

Shuvo Roy, PhD accepts Rising Star award Image: Spencer Brown courtesy of BayBio

Shuvo Roy, PhD, will be inducted on November 1st as a member of the BayBio Pantheon for his contributions to the life sciences industry and specifically for work developing the world’s first surgically implantable bioartificial kidney. The BayBio Pantheon, which currently has 52 elected members, honors the achievements of Northern California life scientists.

Roy will be recognized with the Pantheon Rising Star award, which spotlights an achievement during the preceding year that shows the most promise for future significant contribution to the industry. The awards ceremony will be held in San Francisco.

BayBio is Northern California’s non-profit life science trade association. Roy is a faculty member in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, a joint department of the UCSF Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine.

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By David Jacobson

Recent
Research

Zev Gartner, PhD Image: © majedphoto.com

It can take just the flick of a genetic switch for breast cells to kick-start the normally well-regulated process of growth seen in puberty, pregnancy, or the menstrual cycle—or the mutation of that switch to initiate the unchecked proliferation of cancer.

What happens next depends on whether their cellular neighbors follow their lead, ignore, or exile them. That’s because tissues are not mere collections of identical cells but rather communities working together to carry out tasks.

So, under what conditions will breast cells respond to their fellow tissue-citizens urging them to grow their gland’s capacity—or inciting them to run amok in a cancerous riot?

Shuvo Roy, PhD, with a model of the device. Image: © majedphoto.com

The effort to create the first implantable bioartificial kidney has received a $750,000 gift from the John and Marcia Goldman Foundation.

Led by UCSF bioengineer Shuvo Roy, PhD, The Kidney Project brings together researchers at nine institutions nationwide. Roy is a faculty member in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, a joint department of the UCSF Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine.

Image: © majedphoto.com

By David Jacobson

As the 122 members of the UCSF School of Pharmacy’s class of 2016 began their first classes this week, they rushed by a wall of pictures of the School’s former deans—all staunch supporters of pharmacy education and pharmaceutical science—stretching back to the School’s beginnings in 1872.

This summer, two beloved former deans—Troy C. Daniels, PhD, and Mary Anne Koda-Kimble, PharmD—were recognized for their leadership through major gifts. The first gift was given at the request of Harry W. Hind and the second by the Joseph and Vera Long Foundation.

Future Chef and Pharmacist, Lita Hernandez. Image: Audrey Dilling, KALW Local Public Radio 91.7FM

A community storytelling initiative by a public radio station has yielded a surprising connection between an East Oakland fifth grader and Sharon Youmans, PharmD, MPH, the UCSF School of Pharmacy’s associate dean for diversity.