2020 News

Tue Dec 22, 2020
Some offices in the School will be closed during the 2020 end-of-year period between the winter holidays, limiting the availability of some staff. Closed between Christmas and New Years holidays These offices will be closed December 28, 29, and 30. Department administrative offices Department...
Thu Dec 17, 2020
Vaccines to protect against COVID-19 are being developed with unprecedented speed, but conflicting information has created some mistrust of science and medicine. To understand the safety of these new COVID-19 vaccines, UCSF Magazine talked to experts including Lisa Kroon, PharmD, who leads the...
Thu Nov 19, 2020
Dear UCSF School of Pharmacy family and friends: In the wake of a contentious and bruising presidential campaign and a national wake-up call on race relations in America, COVID-19 cases are soaring in California and the United States. Despite these challenges, the story of our School is one of...
Wed Nov 18, 2020
Over 20 years ago, Michelle Arkin, PhD, kicked off her scientific career working with teams of pharmaceutical industry researchers, developing drugs for autoimmune conditions and cancer. But the allure of following her scientific curiosities as an academic drew her to UCSF, where she continued to...
Tue Nov 17, 2020
Deanna Kroetz, PhD, became the inaugural Jere E. Goyan Presidential Chair for the Advancement of Pharmacy on November 12, 2020. The “chairship” is a title accompanied by funding that Kroetz may use for teaching, research, and service activities toward the advancement of pharmacy. The chair was...
Fri Nov 13, 2020
When San Francisco’s shelter-in-place order was announced on March 16 to combat the spread of COVID-19, UC San Francisco postdoctoral scholars Anum Glasgow, PhD, and Jeff Glasgow, PhD, found themselves confined to their apartment, temporarily barred from their UCSF laboratories. But the married...
Tue Nov 10, 2020
Faculty and student instructors in the UCSF School of Pharmacy have shown remarkable adaptability, creativity, and commitment to training the next generation of doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) graduates. The awardees listed below were selected through student evaluations during the COVID-19 pandemic...
Tue Nov 10, 2020
Every year, each doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) class bestows Didactic Teaching Awards on their instructors and their Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experiences (IPPE) preceptors for excellence in teaching. In addition, students at the UCSF School of Pharmacy’s five Advanced Pharmacy Practice...
Mon Oct 26, 2020
Confused about how to best use our latest collaboration tools? Free, live, online training is now available. Learn how to make the most of Microsoft in a series of both beginning (L100) and intermediate (L200) trainings geared to help you and your team. Discover how to manage your files in Office...
Mon Oct 26, 2020
Bacterial resistance is a growing problem. About 2.8 million people are infected by resistant bacteria or fungi each year, leading to 35,000 deaths. Scientists at the UCSF School of Pharmacy have shown that engineering small molecular changes into some antibiotics can restore their effectiveness in...
Fri Oct 23, 2020
In research published October 15 in Science, an international team of almost 200 researchers led by the Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI), an Organized Research Unit at UC San Francisco in the School of Pharmacy, studied three lethal coronaviruses to identify commonly hijacked cellular...
Mon Oct 19, 2020
It all started with a chat message on Slack. Jaime Fraser, PhD, had been bragging to the members of his lab, which focuses on “discovering the macromolecular structure and dynamics of proteins,” that he could juggle anything. Galen Correy, PhD, a post-doc in the lab, couldn’t let the statement...
Thu Oct 15, 2020
It’s flu shot season and UCSF doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) students once again made sure that School of Pharmacy Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, received his. In what has become an annual tradition, the student-run, interprofessional UCSF Flu Crew gave Guglielmo a quick jab in the arm at the...
Thu Oct 15, 2020
Video of School of Pharmacy - Bob Day on the School's history (October 16, 2020) The UC San Francisco School of Pharmacy has a rich history of contributing to the profession, with the creation of the doctor of pharmacy (PharmD), the innovation of clinical pharmacy, our many important...
Thu Oct 8, 2020
“Naloxone saves lives,” says Andy Nguyen, PharmD. But to work, naloxone, a drug that reverses opioid overdoses, must be given on a moment's notice. That means getting the prescription drug into the hands of as many people who may encounter opioid users as possible. In an effort to expand its usage...
Tue Oct 6, 2020
Seth Shipman, PhD, received the National Institute of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Award for his groundbreaking work on mitochondrial DNA, which is mutated in a number of currently incurable diseases. The award is part of the NIH’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program and is intended...
Mon Oct 5, 2020
The John and Marcia Goldman Foundation, a private family foundation based in San Francisco, recently granted The Kidney Project $1 million to advance its bioartificial kidney. The grant will support the development of the device’s bioreactor, which will perform essential kidney functions that...
Thu Sep 24, 2020
The UC San Francisco School of Pharmacy had five faculty members recognized by the Haile T. Debas Academy of Medical Educators (AME). The AME, housed in the School of Medicine, supports the teaching mission at UC San Francisco with teacher development activities and recognition of leading medical...
Mon Sep 21, 2020
Training the next generation of pharmacists takes a village. Since 2012, the UCSF School of Pharmacy’s Office of Education and Instructional Services (OEIS) has been critical to the School’s doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) degree program, most recently shepherding students and faculty through a...
Fri Sep 18, 2020
Danica Galonić Fujimori, PhD, has been named this year’s Bowes Biomedical Investigator. Fujimori’s research focuses on enzymes, molecular machinery that speeds chemical reactions. Her research delves into how enzymes operate in cancer and in antibiotic resistance. She will receive $1.25 million in...
Mon Sep 14, 2020
The UC San Francisco doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) Class of 2023 may not be practicing pharmacists yet, but they’ve already mastered a crucial skill for their future careers: resilience. Like most things in 2020, the White Coat Ceremony on August 28 was a little different than in years past. With...
Mon Sep 14, 2020
Desi Kotis, PharmD Pharmacists provide critical services from home to hospital, ensuring that patients consistently receive safe, effective, and affordable medications. UCSF Health’s new pharmacy executive wants to make sure that every patient in the system gets care that reflects those...
Thu Sep 10, 2020
Join Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, for the latest School pandemic response updates and a look at opportunities and setbacks for research during COVID-19. Andrej Sali, PhD, associate dean of research, will host reports on this topic from: Kliment Verba, PhD, Quantitative Biosciences...
Thu Aug 13, 2020
Dear UCSF School of Pharmacy family and friends: As our nation, state, and University continue to address the COVID-19 pandemic, the School’s education, science, and patient care missions boldly progress. University of Washington models now project nearly 300,000 American COVID-19 deaths by the...
Wed Aug 12, 2020
Scientists at UCSF have engineered a new antibody-based antiviral for fighting the COVID-19 pandemic that can be administered as a nasal spray, providing a promising new avenue for slowing the spread of the virus. The potential therapy, dubbed AeroNabs, uses synthetic nanobodies, a class of small,...
Fri Aug 7, 2020
“My warmest welcome to you, the distinguished Class of 2023,” said UCSF School of Pharmacy Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, addressing the newest students in the School’s doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) degree program. “Whether you know it or not, your matriculation to our school, your school, has...
Thu Jul 30, 2020
Join School of Pharmacy Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, for the latest on back-to-school plans. Updates this week include: Michael Nordberg, MPA/HSA on the units moving from Laurel Heights to Mission Bay. Joel W. Gonzales discusses the incoming PharmD Class of 2023. Jon Rey, MEd, reports on...
Wed Jul 29, 2020
Research from the UCSF School of Pharmacy and the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR) has recently found that several common excipients—inactive ingredients in drugs, like dyes and preservatives—may interact with human proteins in ways that produce unintended side effects. The team...
Wed Jul 22, 2020
A $500,000 KidneyX prize has been awarded to The Kidney Project—a collaboration between UC San Francisco and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC)—for the development of an implantable dialysis system called iHemo, which would enable patients to safely and effectively treat kidney failure at...
Tue Jul 21, 2020
“Kylie Jenner calls you in a panic, because y’all are besties,” said UC San Francisco School of Pharmacy student Jackie El-Sokkary, Class of 2021, with a straight face to a group of ten fellow students. “She missed her daily ethinyl estradiol birth control dose at 30 micrograms and needs to know if...
Fri Jul 10, 2020
UCSF scientists studying a key enzyme used by the virus that causes COVID-19 have identified chemical building blocks that might eventually be used to make an antiviral drug. The chemical fragments could bind to and disable the enzyme, called the “macro domain,” which is a crucial part of the SARS-...
Thu Jul 2, 2020
UCSF scientists and international collaborators have uncovered new details about how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, takes control of human cells to replicate and spread, findings that point to new potential therapies. The work was carried out by a collaboration based at the UCSF...
Fri Jun 26, 2020
A handful of UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty members, students, and staff recently gathered at the Laurel Heights campus to perform a task outside their typical duties: to receive a shipment of tens of thousands of masks, and over a hundred gallons of hand sanitizer, and prepare these vital...
Thu Jun 25, 2020
Join School of Pharmacy Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, for the latest on response and recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic and the fiscal realities facing the University of California. More updates this week include: Jim Wells, PhD, reports his experience reopening his web lab. Cindy...
Fri Jun 19, 2020
Dear UCSF School of Pharmacy Family and Friends: June 19, Juneteenth, is the celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. However, our nation continues to be shaken to its core by racism and violence directed against Black Americans. The current state of affairs deeply...
Thu Jun 4, 2020
Elisabeth Fall, Eric Davila Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD (left), and Vice Dean Sharon L. Youmans, PharmD, MPH Dear School of Pharmacy Colleagues, Reflecting upon the senseless deaths of black Americans George Floyd on May 25 in Minnesota, Breonna Taylor on March 13 in...
Thu May 28, 2020
In late April, a mere two months after setting out to identify new potential therapies for COVID-19, a consortium of scientists brought together by the UCSF Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) announced that several existing medications for conditions as varied as cancer and psychiatric...
Thu May 28, 2020
Join School of Pharmacy Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, for the latest COVID-19 updates affecting the School, the outlook for the spread of the pandemic, and the latest on the fiscal realities facing the University of California. Town hall guest presenters this week are Igor Mitrovic, MD,...
Fri May 22, 2020
A UCSF School of Pharmacy team of doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) students took 1st place at the Annual National Student Pharmacist Pharmacy & Therapeutics (P&T) Competition, competing against a nationwide field of teams from 68 other pharmacy schools. The winning team of Ryan Thaliffdeen,...
Fri May 22, 2020
Dear UCSF School of Pharmacy Family and Friends: Since my last Update from the Dean on May 8, UCSF has begun a gradual, phased return to work for faculty members and staff. The campus guidelines and the guidelines released by the CDC earlier this week for higher education articulate how different...
Thu May 21, 2020
Maybe it was their vast knowledge about drugs and human health. Or maybe it was their sharply organized pharmacy and their professionalism in ministering to patients in need. But whatever it was, a young James E. Knoben, PharmD ’71, MPH, could see himself thriving among his mother’s colleagues at a...
Tue May 19, 2020
A recent study led by researchers from UC San Francisco and the City University of New York (CUNY) showed that early-life respiratory viruses may play an outsized role in Puerto Rico’s sky-high rates of childhood asthma. But the paper is just a warmup for an upcoming birth cohort study in which ...
Tue May 12, 2020
From directly supporting the front lines of health care to boldly exploring potential treatments, the UCSF School of Pharmacy is moving quickly against the COVID-19 pandemic, applying a scientific mindset to challenges being raised during the crisis. With the goal of bringing attention to this...
Fri May 8, 2020
Dear UCSF School of Pharmacy Family and Friends: San Francisco is now in its eighth full week of shelter in place, and projections regarding COVID-19 continue to change. The most recent projections suggest the national peak in infections is still weeks away, and we might top 3,000 deaths a day....
Thu May 7, 2020
Members of the UCSF School of Pharmacy Class of 2020 have officially earned their doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) degrees, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic, they won’t be walking on stage in commencement regalia quite yet. When the pandemic hit, the class’s commencement was delayed, as was the...
Thu May 7, 2020
Join School of Pharmacy Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, for the latest COVID-19 updates affecting the School and for a look at School and campus plans to reopen lab research and education. Town hall guest presenters this week are bioengineer Tejal Desai, PhD, who represents the School on the...
Thu Apr 30, 2020
Akinyemi Oni-Orisan, PharmD, PhD, received the Darrell Abernethy Early Stage Investigator Award from the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics in April. The award is intended to foster the growth of early-career scientists and honors the memory of Darrell Abernethy, MD, PhD,...
Thu Apr 30, 2020
Join School of Pharmacy Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, for the latest COVID-19 updates affecting the School and for a look at how infectious diseases pharmacist Kathy Yang, PharmD, is coordinating access, eligibility, and monitoring of the drug remdesivir as a potential treatment for COVID-19 in...
Fri Apr 24, 2020
Dear UCSF School of Pharmacy Family and Friends: It’s been 39 days since Mayor London Breed’s shelter-in-place order took effect for the City and County of San Francisco, and 37 days since a similar order by Governor Gavin Newsom went into effect for California. The early actions of local and...
Thu Apr 23, 2020
School of Pharmacy Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, invites Cynthia Zarate, interim director of the School’s Office of Education and Instructional Services (OEIS), to describe the giant leaps required of her team to enable delivery of a successful doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) curriculum in radical...
Thu Apr 16, 2020
Elisabeth Fall Marilyn Stebbins, PharmD As we absorb the daily news of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of us—especially in California where an order to shelter in place was declared early on by Governor Gavin Newsom—have little first-hand knowledge of what it’s like to be a COVID-...
Thu Apr 16, 2020
The UCSF School of Pharmacy has long been an innovator in the pharmacy profession. Graduates of the School’s doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) degree program practice today in roles as varied as community pharmacist, health care policymaker, critical care pharmacist, and infectious diseases pharmacist....
Wed Apr 15, 2020
On this page Part 1—General updates and Q&A Part 2—From the ski slopes of Idaho to the ICU, a COVID-19 patient story Part 1—General updates and Q&A Video of School of Pharmacy - COVID-19 Town Hall Part 1(April 15, 2020) School of Pharmacy Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, shares...
Mon Apr 13, 2020
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a moving picture might be worth a million. That was the impression James Fraser, PhD, left with the audience during the opening to his 2020 Byers Award Lecture in Basic Science. Before diving into the science, Fraser displayed a snapshot of his two sons...
Fri Apr 10, 2020
Dear UCSF School of Pharmacy Family and Friends: I hope this message continues to find you both healthy and sequestered. Much has happened since my March 27 Update, both with the COVID-19 pandemic and the School’s associated response. Again: Refer to COVID-19 Updates for School-specific...
Thu Apr 9, 2020
If a citywide and statewide shelter-in-place order wasn’t enough to keep San Francisco residents indoors last weekend, to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, April’s first major rain storm was likely to guarantee it. But for a group of doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) students at the UC San Francisco...
Thu Apr 9, 2020
School of Pharmacy Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, shares the latest UCSF and School-specific updates on COVID-19 and answers questions from the School community. Additional topics: COVID-19 layoff freeze for staff, and hiring freeze for staff and academics - Michael Nordberg, MPA/HSA,...
Thu Apr 2, 2020
School of Pharmacy Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, shares the latest UCSF and School-specific updates on COVID-19 and answers questions from the School community. Additional topics: Overview of COVID-19-related basic science research in the School by Andrej Sali, PhD, Associate Dean of Research...
Thu Apr 2, 2020
In 2019, and for the 40th consecutive year, the UCSF School of Pharmacy received more funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) than any other pharmacy school in the country. Projects spanning the School’s Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Department of Bioengineering and...
Tue Mar 31, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the globe today is caused by a virus consisting of little more than a short strand of genetic instructions encased in a bubble of protein. But this virus packs a punch because of how it commandeers its human hosts to do its bidding. In fact, human proteins are...
Fri Mar 27, 2020
Dear UCSF School of Pharmacy Family and Friends: I hope this Update finds you sequestered at home. If you—or a member of your family—have been infected or suspect you’ve been infected by the COVID-19 virus, please take care of yourself. For those of you who are virus-free, I hope you remain so....
Wed Mar 25, 2020
In his second town hall during the COVID-19 outbreak, Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, shares the latest news on the coronavirus from national, state and university officials. He also provides updates on graduation and APPEs for PharmD students and answers questions from students Video transcript...
Sat Mar 21, 2020
Jacqueline Fabius is not a scientist. She doesn’t have a PhD in physics or computational biology or virology. As the chief operating officer of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) at UC San Francisco, what she does have is the administrative responsibility for enabling QBI to do what it...
Fri Mar 20, 2020
The UCSF School of Pharmacy 2020 Mary Anne Koda-Kimble Seed Award for Innovation marks its sixth year of funding, this year supporting research projects in the areas of pharmacy education, cancer treatment, the immune system, and kidney function. Applicants were encouraged to submit their boldest...
Wed Mar 18, 2020
In response to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, provides the latest guidance for workers on telecommuting and leave, the impact on laboratories and researchers, and changes PharmD students can expect in the coming weeks. The Dean also shares the latest medical news...
Tue Mar 17, 2020
The UCSF School of Pharmacy’s Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) program was ranked second place nationally in the 2020 U.S. News & World Report survey of best graduate and professional schools. The new ranking comes amid the School’s transformation of its PharmD curriculum, which resulted in...
Fri Mar 13, 2020
More than 37 million Americans are living with chronic kidney disease. Almost 750,000 Americans are dealing with the stark reality of end stage renal disease (ESRD), when their kidneys no longer function well enough to sustain life on their own. For World Kidney Day on March 12, UCSF.edu presented...
Mon Mar 2, 2020
Mitra Assemi, PharmD, the UCSF School of Pharmacy’s associate dean of accreditation and quality improvement, recently won an Award of Excellence in Scholarship in Experiential Education for research looking into how pharmacy schools in the U.S. measure and assure the quality of the experiential, or...
Thu Jan 30, 2020
Kathy Giacomini, PhD, was awarded the 2020 Bernard B. Brodie Award in Drug Metabolism and Disposition from the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET), in recognition of “outstanding original research contributions in drug metabolism and disposition, particularly...
Wed Jan 29, 2020
Free samples of medications provided by pharmaceutical companies and “detailing visits,” where company representatives visit primary care offices to explain the value of various medications, are costly to the health system and ultimately to patients, B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, dean of the UCSF...
Thu Jan 23, 2020
Imagine an artificial hand that can be controlled by a person’s thoughts and transmit the sensation of touch back into a person’s brain. This type of prosthetic hand already exists, but many of the amputees who could benefit from these new devices can’t access them. The gap is due, in part, to the...
Mon Jan 6, 2020
In permanent recognition of Elizabeth Daniels’ decades-long commitment to nurturing an inclusive UCSF School of Pharmacy community, a gift of $1 million to the UCSF Foundation by Troy Daniels, DDS, and Leslie Daniels, established the endowed Elizabeth Daniels Fund, in December 2019, to support...