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...
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...
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...
(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.
