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2021 News
Wed Jul 14, 2021
Dear UCSF School of Pharmacy family and friends,
Change may upend the ways of the world, but change and continuous improvement is our North Star in the UCSF School of Pharmacy.
From our pioneering of the field of clinical pharmacy decades ago, to our rollout of a transformed, unparalleled,...
Tue Jul 13, 2021
Clockwise from top left: Kelly Lam, Sabrina Lin, Afshar Hassani, and Venus Tong, all in the PharmD Class of 2022.
This April, a group of UCSF second-year doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) students won the ISPOR 2021 Pharmacoeconomic Debate competition. The debate, which tackled the impacts of different insurance plans on the quality of U.S. health care, was an opportunity for students to explore the often-overlooked...
Wed Jun 30, 2021
A cell (blue) heavily infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus particles (green), isolated from a patient sample.
While businesses and schools reopen across the U.S. thanks to the domestic waning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the virus responsible for the disease, SARS-CoV-2, continues to spread globally.
Scientists in the UCSF Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI), an organized research unit in the UCSF...
Thu Jun 17, 2021
The UCSF Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine now use helium recycling equipment, shown above, to avoid wasting the gas, which is used to cool certain types of scientific and medical imaging machines.
Helium, the ultra-light gas found in airships and birthday balloons, has a quirk that makes it invaluable for science and medicine. With a freezing point of -458°F (-272.2°C), it is only a liquid at all but the coldest of temperatures, making it an ideal substance for supercooling the electronics...
Mon Jun 14, 2021
UCSF School of Pharmacy Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD
In May 2021, two UCSF School of Pharmacy graduating classes received their doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) degrees, each in a virtual commencement.
The ceremonies, honoring the PharmD classes that matriculated to UCSF in 2017 and 2018, were broadcast on May 15 and May 21, respectively. Each ceremony...
Wed Jun 2, 2021
Susan Merrell
As 2020 drew to a close, the first two effective vaccines for COVID-19 were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Within days, institutions around the country, like UCSF, began vaccinating health care workers, essential workers, and vulnerable individuals.
In the coming months,...
Wed May 12, 2021
NIH
A DNA double helix and chromosomes inside a cell. A UCSF/Stanford study of Neanderthal and human DNA found over 400 changes to regulatory DNA that may help explain the differences between the hominid relatives.
Very little remains of the Neanderthals, evolutionary cousins of humans who lived from 500,000 to 40,000 years ago, but Neanderthal DNA extracted from fossilized specimens is making it easier to learn more about our extinct hominid relatives.
Scientists at UC San Francisco and Stanford University...
Wed Apr 28, 2021
As more and more people receive a COVID-19 vaccine, one question looms large: how long will immunity to this disease last?
Only time can definitively answer this question, as researchers monitor the pandemic’s spread in an increasingly vaccinated population. But a new test, developed at the UCSF...
Mon Apr 26, 2021
Nicola Clayton, PharmD ’14, left, practices giving a shot to James Go, PharmD ’17, as part of a recent immunization training for pharmacists that was organized by faculty members in the UCSF School of Pharmacy.
Many Americans are still waiting for their chance to get a COVID-19 vaccine to do their part in ending the pandemic. For many, these immunizations will occur at a familiar location: a local pharmacy.
Pharmacists have been critical to the U.S. COVID response, just as they are in the health system...
Wed Apr 14, 2021
A PharmD student (right) helps a patient determine prescription drug coverage under Medicare Part D as part of an annual outreach event. Faculty members and School leadership are working to ensure that the PharmD curriculum produces future pharmacists who are anti-racist and skilled in navigating issues of equity and inclusion.
When millions gathered around the country in the summer of 2020 to protest the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and numerous other people of color, students in the UCSF School of Pharmacy knew they had to act.
Three students—Pamela Concepcion, June Kim, and Temi Sofeso, all Class of 2022...
Fri Apr 2, 2021
The UCSF School of Pharmacy's 2021 Mary Anne Koda-Kimble Seed Awards for Innovation, given in honor of the School’s former dean, were awarded to eight projects across education, clinical research, and basic science.
Applicants were encouraged to submit their boldest, riskiest, and most blue-sky...
Thu Mar 11, 2021
Dear UCSF School of Pharmacy family and friends:
Almost exactly a year ago, a shelter-in-place order was announced for several California counties, including San Francisco, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This order did not come as a surprise—our medical centers and educational units had been...
Wed Mar 10, 2021
Akinyemi Oni-Orisan, PharmD, PhD
As society continues to grapple with issues of race, racism, and systemic injustice, health care and medicine remain at a crossroads, forced to balance an understanding of the role of ancestry in health outcomes with the need to shed racially biased practices.
UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty...
Mon Mar 8, 2021
An ambitious effort to catalog the genomes of a large, diverse pool of people recently published its first batch of results. The project, carried out in part by scientists in the UCSF School of Pharmacy, is a critical step toward making precision medicine more effective and equitable.
The study,...
Fri Mar 5, 2021
Bob Day, PharmD ’59
The UCSF School of Pharmacy has existed for 148 years and for more than 60 of them, it has borne the imprint of the work of Robert L. Day, PharmD ’59. Bob, as most of his friends and colleagues know him, arrived at the School as a student and soon became a valued faculty member. His influence on...
Thu Feb 18, 2021
For the 41st year in a row, the UCSF School of Pharmacy received more research funds from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) than any other pharmacy school in the country.
The School’s grants from the agency in 2020, summing to $40,905,190, were more than the total grants earned by the next...
Wed Feb 17, 2021
Gabriela Hasbun
Matthew Jacobson, PhD
At the age of 39, UCSF biophysicist Matthew Jacobson, PhD, was trailblazing new paths in drug discovery and training future generations of scientists and pharmacists. But he was also struggling with worrisome and worsening symptoms like tremors, an unsteady gait, severe pain shooting down his arm....
Thu Feb 11, 2021
PharmaMar
Aplidin is extracted from Aplidium albicans, a sea squirt found off the coast of Spain.
Plitidepsin, a drug approved by the Australian Regulatory Agency for the treatment of multiple myeloma, has potent antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, according to researchers at the UCSF QBI Coronavirus Research Group (QCRG) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt...
Wed Feb 10, 2021
Susan Merrell
UCSF pharmacy student Matthew Aludino, right, scans a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine prior to administering it on the first day of vaccinations at UCSF, December 16, 2020.
UCSF pharmacy student Matthew Aludino, Class of 2021, gave over 100 influenza vaccines during the course of his doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) education. So it was a no-brainer that he could lend a hand when UCSF put out a call for volunteers to administer the first COVID-19 vaccinations at the end of...
Wed Jan 20, 2021
Tejal Desai, PhD, and colleagues took inspiration from the structure of DNA to engineer a biomaterial that promises to improve CAR-T cell therapy for various cancers.
It may sound like science fiction, but since 2017, scientists and oncologists have genetically engineered patients’ own immune cells to successfully track down and destroy tumor cells. The approach, called CAR T-cell therapy, is currently used to treat just a small number of cancers of the blood...
Tue Jan 12, 2021
Dean B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD opened the ceremony by highlighting frontline health care workers, physicians, nurses, pharmacists and scientists working to combat COVID-19.
When the UC San Francisco doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) class of 2020 delayed their commencement back in April, it was hoped that the COVID-19 pandemic would be contained in time for the class to celebrate their new degrees in person, surrounded by friends and family. But it wasn’t meant to be.
Even...