UCSF School of Pharmacy Leads in NIH Funding for 45th Consecutive Year

The UCSF School of Pharmacy continues to lead the country in competitive federal research funding among pharmacy schools, capturing $45.8 million in 2024 to fuel life-changing drug discoveries, bioengineering, pharmacokinetics and more.

The school ranked No. 1 out of 83 pharmacy schools across the country in the latest rankings, which were released by the independent Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research based on National Institutes of Health (NIH) data.

The funds include 77 grants from across the school’s Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, and Department of Clinical Pharmacy; and the UCSF Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI).

“Academic research that advances human health is a critical part of our mission,” said Dean Kathy Giacomini, PhD, BSPharm. “Every day, our scientists lead innovative studies that expand our collective understanding of biology and disease and drive the development of new, more-precise drugs and therapeutics.”

The school has achieved a number of research advancements with support from NIH grants over the years. These have included:

• Foundational methods for protein design that have been licensed by more than 200 companies and thousands of academic users (Tanja Kortemme, PhD)
• Determining structures of drug candidates targeting a breast cancer protein in a different way (James Fraser, PhD)
• New therapeutics to treat opioid addiction (Aashish Manglik, PhD, and Brian Shoichet, PhD)
• The development of molecules that block a protein that is a key inducer of Alzheimer's disease (Michelle Arkin, PhD, and Kevan Shokat, PhD)

Top 10 school recipients of NIH funds in 2024

Nevan Krogan, PhD, Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, $10,959,820

Nevan Krogan, PhD, director of the school’s Quantitative Biosciences Institute, is developing experimental and computational tools that allow for effective connections between discovery research and the clinical world, enabling novel therapies for diseases.

Elisabeth Fall

Rada Savic, PhD

Rada Savic, PhD, Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, $8,268,627

Rada Savic, PhD, investigates optimal drug discovery and development approaches using computational methods, integrating data and knowledge to determine the optimal choices of precise and personalized treatments.

Kathy Giacomini, PhD, BSPharm, Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, $2,492,825

In addition to setting the school’s strategic agenda and ensuring that it has the resources and organizational structure required to succeed in its mission, Dean Kathy Giacomini, PhD, BSPharm, focuses on drugs used in the treatment of diseases associated with metabolic syndrome and aims to advance regulatory sciences while improving the development and evaluation of diagnostics, therapeutics and medical devices.

Adam Abate, PhD, Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, $2,038,879

Adam Abate, PhD, developed a droplet-based microfluidic sequencer that became the foundation for the sequencing company GnuBIO. He uses this approach for directed evolution, genetic sequencing and cell sorting.

Su Guo, PhD, Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, $1,871,774

As director of the school’s Center for Collaborative Innovation, Su Guo, PhD, leads efforts to increase collaboration between clinical, translational and discovery science in teaching and research. In addition, her research focuses on how genes regulate brain development and behavior and ultimately impact neuropsychiatric disorders.

Elisabeth Fall

Bo Huang, PhD

Bo Huang, PhD, Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, $1,433,812

Bo Huang, PhD, seeks to understand how macromolecular interactions sets up subcellular compartments that control signaling and nuclear domains that regulate gene function.

Aashish Manglik, MD, PhD, Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, $1,419,857

Aashish Manglik, MD, PhD, leads research that focuses on the largest group of drug targets in the human body, the G protein coupled receptors, with the aim of understanding the most basic principles of these receptors to develop new, effective medications with decreased side effects.

Zev Gartner, PhD, Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, $1,095,609

Zev Gartner, PhD, and his lab build, perturb and model human tissues in vitro using techniques from the chemical, physical and biological sciences to understand how cells self-organize into tissues, how the structure of tissues help regulate cell behaviors and how tissue structure breaks down in diseases like cancer.

Elisabeth Fall

Ryan Hernandez, PhD

Ryan Hernandez, PhD, Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, $1,063,927

Ryan Hernandez, PhD, studies patterns of human genetic variation from global populations using large-scale whole genome sequencing data in order to understand genetic susceptibility to disease and drug response.

Nadav Ahituv, PhD, Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences $1,055,143

Nadav Ahituv, PhD, focuses on discovering gene regulatory elements in the human genome and linking nucleotide variation within them to specific phenotypes.