Sub-Saharan Africa is home to a billion people and to overlapping health burdens, including the world’s highest rates of both malaria and HIV infection.
(left to right) The Galega officinalis (aka French lilac)was used as a folk remedy for diabetes symptoms for centuries before analysis of its extracts revealed compounds that lowered blood sugar. Eventually, metformin (molecule and pill) was developed. It is a related molecule that is longer acting and less toxic than the plant extracts. Metformin acts on cells in the liver (center and cross-section right) to reduce glucose production and thus blood sugar.
In people with type 2 diabetes, the body is less able to use the hormone insulin to regulate blood sugar. The disease affects 350 million patients globally—including 29 million in the United States, where it is the leading cause of blindness, kidney failure, and non-accident-related amputations.
Images of P. aeruginosa biofilm—a bacterial community that takes the form of mushroom-like structures. Main/upper left image looks down at the biofilm, the lower/righthand images show cross-sections. This biofilm was cultured from the airways of a patient with cystic fibrosis.
Nearly every human bacterial infection—including some of the most serious, life threatening, and costly to treat—can take the form of a biofilm, in which bacteria aggregate into structured communities that enclose themselves within a secreted slime.
Francesca Aweeka, PharmD, a faculty member in the School’s Department of Clinical Pharmacy, will co-lead a new five-year, $3.4 million study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to address one of the world’s most vexing health problems—preventing malaria, especially in the most vulnerable populations, pregnant women and young children in Africa.
I specialize in the treatment of multi-drug resistant infections. My area of research is in the pharmacodynamic optimization of antibiotics for the treatment of multi-drug resistant gram-negative bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa. I am particularly interested in the treatment of bacterial biofilms, which are particularly difficult to treat with conventional antibiotics. I am also an Infectious Diseases Pharmacist Specialist at UCSF Health. In the School of Pharmacy, I am heavily involved in the PharmD curriculum and am currently the co-director of the Foundations course.
Leslie Z. Benet, PhD, UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member, received the 2008 Paul Ehrlich Magic Bullet Lifetime Achievement Award at the Second World Conference on Magic Bullets, which convened in Nuremberg, Germany, in early October.
Kathy M. Giacomini, PhD, chair, department of biopharmaceutical sciences and Leslie Z. Benet, PhD, professor in the same department, were both honored at the Pharmaceutical Sciences World Congress, held May 29 to June 4, 2004 in Kyoto, Japan.
Leslie Z. Benet, PhD, was named a Thomson ISI Highly Cited Researcher in December 2003. The designation means that Benet's research publications on pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics have been extensively cited by other scientists in their publications. Citation is an important way to measure influence in science through time.
