Aweeka: “Be More of a Global Pharmacist”

Fran Aweeka, PharmD, an expert in clinical pharmacology and infectious disease treatment, has dedicated her career to improving therapies for malaria, HIV and other global health threats.

Energized from her yearlong term as global chair at England’s University of Bath, she is staying engaged with her 2023–2024 home away from home and embracing the challenge of finding new ways to foster international collaboration in pharmaceutical sciences.

For more than two decades, Aweeka, who is professor and vice chair of research in the school’s Department of Clinical Pharmacy, led UCSF’s internationally recognized Drug Research Unit, spearheading research on anti-infective drugs in resource-limited settings, particularly sub-Saharan Africa. Now, she’ll be integrating these experiences into advancing research, education and training initiatives that can have a lasting impact on the field of clinical pharmacology and the global fight against infectious diseases.

Expanding research and funding opportunities

One of Aweeka’s primary goals is to develop joint research projects that leverage national and international funding sources, such as the National Institutes of Health, UK Research and Innovation and the Gates Foundation. By identifying synergies and bringing together expertise across institutions, she aims to generate high-impact, co-authored publications that push the boundaries of pharmacology and infectious disease treatment.

“I didn't really think there would be a connection [in Bath] with my work on malaria pharmacology, but by chance I met Nikoletta Fotaki, professor of biopharmaceutics, at the university’s Centre for Therapeutic Innovation. She happened to have a Gates grant to look at drug interactions of malaria drugs and children on the absorption level,” Aweeka said. “And now we've written a paper together, and we have a second one that she’s driving. These were things that we really couldn’t have identified without being on the ground there and talking to people.”

That positive outcome from engaging multiple investigators at Aweeka’s first transatlantic symposium in March 2024, which focused on antimalarial resistance, led to plans for another to be held in May 2025. This time the focus will be on therapeutic innovation and next-generation approaches in mechanistic cell biology.

Further collaborations are also planned in the fields of regulatory science, in partnership with the UCSF-Stanford Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSI), and big data, specifically on issues of aging, multimorbidity and polypharmacy.

“The hope is that the interests of our basic scientists and our discovery scientists can be merged,” Aweeka said. “Our big data idea focuses on elder care and understanding the health care system in England compared with our health care, and trying to learn from both their databases and our Medicare database what’s working and what isn’t.”

Aweeka emphasizes the importance of mutually beneficial research and complementary expertise. “The days of the lone scientist — like Marie Curie in her lab — are gone,” she said. “You need team science, and the team I’m on involves global effort in everything.”

Innovating teaching and curriculum design

Beyond research, Aweeka is also focused on strengthening connections in pharmacy education regardless of international program differences. She pointed out that while pharmacy learners in Britain receive less clinical training and do not have the equivalent of a PharmD, they receive a rigorous education after which they attain prescribing privileges their American counterparts cannot.

“Hopefully the example of effectiveness with prescribing privileges can inform — at least in California — some of the pending legislation that might empower our pharmacists in better ways,” Aweeka said.

Other education initiatives that emerged during her time at Bath include developing projects and curricula that promote small-group inquiry, regulatory discovery and experiential learning.

A more interconnected academic community

By creating opportunities for faculty development and exchange programs, as well as facilitating visiting research scholars, postdoctoral trainees and faculty members between institutions, Aweeka said she hopes to build a more interconnected academic community.

Recalling how Richard H. Guy, PhD, a former UCSF faculty member, helped initiate her relationship with the University of Bath, and crediting University of Bath professor Stephen Ward, PhD, with playing an instrumental role in continuing to facilitate her interaction there, Aweeka said the connections her global chair position created have been a welcome contrast to the isolation many programs experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I really wanted to develop a sort of triangle of relationships between schools of pharmacy around the world, so that we could exchange teaching ideas, innovation and bring people together on a research level,” she said. “The more folks do that, and become global pharmacists, the more they're going to start to see possibilities for their own careers and how they can have more of an impact where the problems lie.”