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2015 News
Wed Dec 23, 2015
UCSF School of Pharmacy
Sharon L. Youmans, PharmD, MPH
Sharon L. Youmans, PharmD, MPH, and UCSF School of Pharmacy vice dean, is the newly elected Council of Deans Secretary, American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP).
The council includes a select number of the nation’s leaders in academic pharmacy. Council activities focus on educational...
Tue Dec 22, 2015
Research in the lab of UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member Nadav Ahituv, PhD, in collaboration with the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research and others, has identified variations at four locations in the genome underlying risk for the most common type of abdominal hernia.
The findings of this...
Tue Dec 22, 2015
Sepsis occurs when the body responds to an infection with a mix of tissue-damaging inflammation and anti-inflammatory responses. This biological storm can lead to acute organ dysfunction (severe sepsis) and dropping blood pressure that does not respond to intravenous fluids (septic shock).
There...
Fri Dec 18, 2015
James Wells, PhD, whose pioneering innovations in protein engineering and technologies to identify small molecules to aid in drug discovery have yielded more than 60 patents, launched three companies, and created two UCSF technology centers, has been elected as a fellow to the National Academy of...
Wed Dec 16, 2015
How do you discover new drugs against diseases such as cancer?
A commonly used modern method is to screen thousands of chemical compounds against genetically identical laboratory-grown cancer cells (cell lines), then track how those compounds alter the cells’ behavior or appearance (phenotype)....
Tue Dec 15, 2015
Despite Congressional mandates aimed at diversifying clinical research, little has changed in the last 30 years in both the numbers of studies that include minorities and the diversity of scientists being funded, according to a new analysis by researchers at UC San Francisco.
That lack of...
Tue Dec 8, 2015
Healing Hands: Pharmacist Janel Boyle, PharmD, PhD (far left), who is developing dosing models tailored for children, comforts a young patient with her mother in the infusion clinic at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco.
Reprinted courtesy of UCSF Magazine.
In the pediatric bone marrow transplant clinic, pharmacist Janel Boyle’s past and present collide.
She drifts past young patients—many of them infants and toddlers—and notes their beaming smiles and balding heads. Her gaze shifts to the parents, their...
Tue Nov 17, 2015
Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness worldwide, the leading cause of vision loss in the United States, and cases are increasing with an aging population. Currently the condition can be treated with surgery—an expensive intervention that leaves most patients blinded in developing countries...
Mon Nov 9, 2015
Brian Shoichet, PhD
More than a quarter of all drugs work by targeting one of a large family of proteins called G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Hundreds of different GPCRs are embedded in cell membranes, converting stimuli from the outside world—neurotransmitters, hormones, even light—into intracellular signals...
Thu Nov 5, 2015
(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....
Tue Nov 3, 2015
Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD
School of Pharmacy
University of California, San Francisco
Dear UCSF School of Pharmacy Family and Friends,
As outlined in my last Update, we are moving forward in support of our latest School plan—Leading Change: Strategic Plan 2015–2020. Our recent successes listed below are testimony that we are well on our way to realizing our vision: a time when...
Tue Nov 3, 2015
The research journey toward building a fully functioning, surgically implantable artificial kidney as an alternative to kidney transplant and dialysis just took another step forward with the announcement of a $6 million grant to The Kidney Project, headquartered at the UCSF School of Pharmacy. The...
Thu Oct 29, 2015
Katherine Yang
In these multiple images of P. aeruginosa biofilm a bacterial community that takes the form of mushroom-like structures. The main, upper left image looks down at the biofilm, the lower, right-hand 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.
Biofilms can be up to 1,000 times more resistant...
Tue Oct 20, 2015
UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member Tejal Desai, PhD, has been newly elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly known as the Institute of Medicine (IOM).
NAM membership is considered one of the highest honors in health and medicine. Elected by current members, the membership...
Thu Oct 15, 2015
Bacteria generate small molecules to fend off their fellow microbes. They also produce molecules that affect the response of host organisms—including humans—to their presence. Such molecules have been a major source of antibiotics, immunosuppressants, anti-cancer agents, and other drugs. But their...
Wed Sep 23, 2015
UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member Leslie Benet, PhD, has been named the 2015 recipient of the North American Scientific Achievement Award, presented by the International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics (ISSX).
The award recognizes Benet’s long-standing leadership in discovering key...
Tue Sep 15, 2015
A new collaboration between Celgene Corp. and the Recombinant Antibody Network (RAN) will support the development of next-generation, antibody-based cancer therapies. The RAN is a consortium comprising researchers from the UCSF School of Pharmacy (UCSF Antibiome Center), the University of Chicago,...
Tue Sep 1, 2015
Silicon nanopore membranes developed in the Roy Lab will provide material to encapsulate pancreatic islets.
UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member Shuvo Roy, PhD, has received a three-year $1 million grant to create surgically implantable capsules of donor pancreas cells to free type 1 diabetes patients from daily insulin injections and the disease’s potentially life-threatening complications. The work...
Wed Aug 12, 2015
Renowned researcher and educator Matthew Jacobson, PhD, has been named the new chair of the UCSF School of Pharmacy’s Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry. His appointment by Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, will be effective January 15, 2016.
Jacobson will become the department’s 10th chair...
Mon Jul 27, 2015
Taxanes are a class of drugs widely used to treat a variety of cancers, including breast, ovarian, lung, gastric, and head and neck. But dosages are often limited by toxic side effects—most commonly damage to the body’s peripheral nerves, causing numbness, pain, and/or hyper-sensitivity—that can...
Tue Jul 14, 2015
Spiked rods of uric acid crystals from synovial fluid photographed under a microscope with polarized light. In patients with gout, such crystals can accumulate in the joints, causing pain and inflammation.
Allopurinol, the first-choice medication for treating gout—an excruciatingly painful condition that is the most common form of inflammatory arthritis, afflicts more than eight million Americans, and is on the rise worldwide—is not fully effective in more than half of patients.
A recent study led...
Tue Jun 30, 2015
Andrej Sali, PhD, has been appointed associate dean of research of the UCSF School of Pharmacy, effective July 1, 2015. The appointment is in addition to Sali’s full professorship in the School’s Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences. As he continues with his own research, Sali will...
Mon Jun 29, 2015
A fruit fly’s compound eye contains 800 prism-like facets whose six distinct photoreceptor cells capture light coming in from different angles in space. These signals must all find their way to different spots in the fly brain’s visual map of the world.
How does brain circuitry organize itself during development? In at least one case—the seemingly complex visual system of the fruit fly, which connects its 800-facet compound eyes to its brain—the answer lies in just three simple rules.
The discovery, which unravels a trick of neural wiring that...
Mon Jun 29, 2015
RADM Pamela Schweitzer, PharmD ’87
The 2015 Distinguished Alumnus of the Year is Rear Admiral Pamela Schweitzer, PharmD ’87. The recognition by the Pharmacy Alumni Association is given to the School graduate who has made outstanding contributions to the profession of pharmacy, to society, and/or to UCSF.
A generation ago,...
Wed Jun 17, 2015
We are rapidly moving forward to develop a doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) curriculum that will prepare pharmacists to excel in a changing health care marketplace. A recent interview with Sharon L. Youmans, PharmD, MPH, our vice dean, lays out our plans. What will be the impact of the new curriculum?...
Wed Jun 17, 2015
The UCSF School of Pharmacy’s top-ranked doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) curriculum is in the initial stages of its most significant transformation in two decades. Named the UCSF Bridges Pharmacy Curriculum Project, the effort is led by Vice Dean Sharon L. Youmans, PharmD, MPH, and is currently...
Wed Jun 17, 2015
19th century School instructor Josephine Barbat (aka former associate dean Lorie Rice) leads the event’s closing cheer as Dean Guglielmo looks on.
Concluding a year-long celebration of the 150th anniversary of the founding of UC San Francisco, the School of Pharmacy presented its own “Making History” event in Byers Auditorium on the Mission Bay campus on May 30, 2015.
The fast-paced 90-minute program included a history video, a slide show of...
Wed May 20, 2015
Rifkind Award winners (left to right) An-Chi Tseng, PharmD; Anh Doan, PharmD; and Lily Xia, PharmD; Clara Mikhaeil, PharmD; Heidemarie MacMaster, PharmD.
Studies of pharmacist interventions during comprehensive medication reviews, the impact of new tools to aid drug selection from a hospital formulary, and a project ensuring that hospital patients receiving anti-clotting drugs are properly educated upon discharge took top honors at the Department of...
Tue May 12, 2015
Distinguished Alumnus of the Year Pamela Schweitzer, PharmD '87, leads the procession of graduates into the hall
The UCSF School of Pharmacy held its 2015 commencement on May 8 at Louise Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, conferring doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) degrees on a 125-member graduating class.
Addressing the large gathering including hundreds of graduates’ friends and family members, School...
Wed May 6, 2015
Richard Trujillo, UCSF
Gordon Dow, PharmD ’65, with two of the three Roger G. Ketchum scholarship winners, Kathyrn Salvadora and Thomas Lee (both Class of 2016).
The annual UCSF School of Pharmacy Student Awards and Recognition Dinner, hosted by Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, and sponsored by Ralph’s Inc., was held on Friday, May 1, 2015, at UCSF’s Mission Bay campus.
The event honored dozens of students whose excellence and leadership were recognized...
Wed Apr 22, 2015
James Wells, PhD, chair of the School’s Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, has been elected as a member of the 2015 class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Founded in 1780, the Academy is one of the nation’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers. It...
Wed Apr 1, 2015
School faculty member Esteban G. Burchard, MD, MPH, has been appointed to an expert panel advising the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on how to develop President Barack Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative.
The $215 million initiative, announced by Obama earlier this year, aims to gather and...
Tue Mar 31, 2015
Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD
School of Pharmacy
University of California, San Francisco
Dear UCSF School of Pharmacy Family and Friends:
As usual, there is much to report since I last wrote.
Strategic planning
Our next strategic plan, Leading Change: Strategic Plan 2015–2020, is now complete, and our work is well under way. Five themes center upon our mission—research, education,...
Fri Mar 13, 2015
Kaz Tsuruta
Marcus Ferrone, PharmD, JD
Marcus Ferrone, PharmD, JD, a faculty member in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy, has been named the California Pharmacists Association (CPhA) 2015 Innovative Pharmacist of the Year.
The award, from the largest state association representing pharmacists, recognizes a member pharmacist for...
Mon Mar 9, 2015
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...
Thu Feb 26, 2015
For the 35th consecutive year, the UCSF School of Pharmacy has received more funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) than any other pharmacy school in the United States.
School researchers were awarded $31.8 million during the 2014 fiscal year, from October 1, 2013 to September 30,...
Mon Feb 23, 2015
Robert Gibson, PharmD, in 1976
School of Pharmacy alumnus Robert Gibson, PharmD '58, has been a tireless advocate for equality in education and in the profession of pharmacy, and is still active as a board member of the California Pharmacists Association Education Foundation.
In 2006, he was the first African American to...
Wed Feb 11, 2015
William DeGrado, PhD, faculty member in the School’s Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, has been named the 2015 recipient of The Protein Society’s Stein and Moore Award.
The award is given annually by the international society “to recognize eminent leaders in protein science who have made...
Thu Jan 8, 2015
The glass apple is awarded as a symbol of the Dean's Innovation in Education Award. Honorees also received $1,000.
The inaugural presentation of the Dean’s Innovation in Education Awards took place during the School of Pharmacy faculty meeting at Mission Hall on the Mission Bay campus on January 6, 2015.
Honorees receiving the award’s engraved glass apple and $1,000 were Jaekyu Shin, PharmD, and Marcus Ferrone...