Kroetz awarded the Jere E. Goyan Presidential Chair

Kroetz was the inaugural recipient of the award to honor the School’s former dean

Deanna Kroetz, PhD, became the inaugural Jere E. Goyan Presidential Chair for the Advancement of Pharmacy on November 12, 2020. The “chairship” is a title accompanied by funding that Kroetz may use for teaching, research, and service activities toward the advancement of pharmacy.

The chair was funded by Linda Lloyd Hart, who had her $500,000 donation matched by the University of California Office of the President.

Hart, a former and longtime member of the School of Pharmacy faculty, named the chair in honor of her late husband, Jere E. Goyan, PhD. Goyan joined the School’s faculty in 1963 and led the School as its longest-serving dean from 1967 to 1992, taking a 15-month leave from 1979 to 1981 to serve as commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under President Jimmy Carter.

Kroetz, a member of the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, only got to meet Goyan once, when she was interviewing for a position in the UCSF School of Pharmacy and at the end of Goyan’s tenure as dean of the School.

“Goyan was a legend,” Kroetz says. “He understood pharmacy and he understood science. He managed to build a top-ranked clinical program alongside a top-ranked science program.”

The former dean’s professional influence reached far beyond UCSF. He was instrumental in a decision that California pharmacists be required to provide instructions to patients for taking their drugs. As the first pharmacist to be appointed FDA commissioner, Goyan approved patient-centered legislation requiring that drug information inserts be included in all prescription drug packages.

He was the first pharmacist elected to the Institute of Medicine (today known as the National Academy of Medicine) in 1978 and he was chosen by the American Pharmacists Association in 1992 to receive the Remington Honor Medal, the top award bestowed by the association and the profession of pharmacy’s highest recognition. Goyan served as president of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy from 1978 to 1979 and as president of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists from 1990 to 1991. In 1996, he received the UCSF Medal, the University’s highest honor.

“Jere E. Goyan was the most visionary, impactful dean of his time,” said B. Joseph Guglielmo, PharmD, dean of the UCSF School of Pharmacy. “He consistently advanced the profession emphasizing high quality science, while successfully introducing the PharmD degree as the national standard.”

“No member of our faculty better epitomizes Dean Goyan’s legacy than Deanna Kroetz. Internationally recognized for her scientific contributions to pharmacogenomics, Dr. Kroetz also was critical to the recent successful transformation of our curriculum,” Guglielmo added.

Kroetz, who has a bachelor of science in pharmacy as well as a PhD in pharmaceutics, investigates the genetic basis of why some patients experience drug toxicity at certain levels and others do not.

Her current work looks at sensory peripheral neuropathy, a condition of hypersensitivity to touch that develops in many patients on chemotherapy, especially for breast cancer. The pain can be debilitating and prevent patients from doing simple manual tasks, like buttoning a button. Some patients even have to stop taking cancer drugs because of the pain.

Kroetz recently identified a particular signaling pathway that appears to play a role in developing sensory peripheral neuropathy. The goal is to advance the research to prevent the condition or treat it.

“I was totally surprised to find out I’d gotten the chair,” Kroetz said. “It’s a tremendous honor to receive an award that honors Jere Goyan.”

Tags

Category:
Sites:
School of Pharmacy, Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, PharmD Degree Program

About the School: The UCSF School of Pharmacy aims to solve the most pressing health care problems and strives to ensure that each patient receives the safest, most effective treatments. Our discoveries seed the development of novel therapies, and our researchers consistently lead the nation in NIH funding. The School’s doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) degree program, with its unique emphasis on scientific thinking, prepares students to be critical thinkers and leaders in their field.