From the Chair of Pharmaceutical Sciences
The faculty of the school planned an approach to develop a truly international class research effort. We are passionate believers in the benefit of research to our teaching programs and all faculty teach in both professional and graduate programs. Our research programs encompass basic, translational and clinical sciences. This puts in an excellent position to take advantage of recent NIH initiatives in the translational and clinical sciences. In the basic and translational sciences, we started by defining where we wanted to go and decided to focus initially in two areas; Molecular Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology. These areas are defined more fully in Figure 1.
Molecular Toxicology is very different to "classical toxicology" and involves defining individual susceptibility to drugs and toxins employing both pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics. These disciplines rely heavily on molecular techniques and information generated by the human genome project. Since many of us in the Pharmacy School have an interest in drugs and their adverse effects, the mechanistic aspects of drug induced toxicity is an area of emphasis. If one doesn't understand the mechanisms underlying drug toxicity it is not possible to prevent or ameliorate toxicity or design rational antidotal therapies. Environmental toxicity and carcinogenesis continue to be major areas of regulatory and public concern and we have many active researchers in these fields.
Pharmaceutical Biotechnology is a new area that has its roots in classical pharmaceutics, which in my opinion is one of the disciplines that makes a pharmacy school unique. Our research activity in this field is focused on the newer drugs containing proteins and oligonucleotides, The stability, targeted delivery and analysis of these macromolecular pharmaceuticals presents new challenges which has given our program a unique expertise and international reputation. An understanding and application of the principles of pharmaceutical chemistry is essential to studies in this area of research.
If molecular toxicology and pharmaceutical biotechnology represent the wheels of our research operation, cancer pharmacology and biomolecular structure are the axles which connect the wheels and generate a cohesive, collaborative and integrated research operation (Fig 2)
Some of our efforts in cancer pharmacology and biomolecular structure are described below. Drug development of new anticancer agents has been a focus of research and involves identification of suitable targets for anticancer drug development, considerable medicinal chemistry expertise and translational studies to move compounds into clinical trials. Medicinal chemistry is essential to any pharmacy school and forms the basis for our efforts in drug development. We have also developed a cutting edge molecular modeling facility where we can attack macromolecular structure and drug design issues using a computer based approach. This contributes to both drug development and elucidation of biomolecular structure. Analysis and pharmacokinetics of anticancer agents in clinical trials was lacking on the UCD campus until we developed a pharmacology core facility in conjunction with the University of Colorado Cancer Center. This facility assists in the design of clinical trials from both a pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic perspective. Chemoprevention, or prevention of cancer development, is the expertise of existing and new faculty and a new emphasis of the National Institutes of Health. The cancer pharmacology area interfaces very well with molecular toxicology and generates many collaborative research projects. Biomolecular structure includes our focus in protein structure and biophysical chemistry and integrates with our efforts in pharmaceutical biotechnology. We have also invested in mass spectrometry capability for both small molecule analysis and for proteomic-based analysis. Once again this feeds back into pharmaceutical biotechnology, identification of biomarkers in toxicological studies and identification of suitable drug targets for drug development.
As shown in fig 3, our research emphasizes basic, translational and clinical sciences. Research efforts in the translational and clinical sciences can be broadly defines as encompassing pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and pharmacogenomics. We have a particular emphasis on research in HIV pharmacology, pharmacokinetics and therapeutics. Faculty also examine how the disciplines of pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics can optimize therapeutic interventions. Our efforts in these areas integrate with basic research initiatives in pharmacokinetics, drug metabolism, biomarkers and proteomics to provide powerful tools to advance drug therapy.
Our investment in faculty, infrastructure and collaborative approaches to complex problems has placed the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in an excellent position to exploit the advances in technology and drug development in the post genome era. We still have a long way to go but the signs of progress are inescapable. We are consistently ranked as one of the top pharmacy schools in the nation based on research funding. The major reason for our success is quite simple - it is the people that work in the department who make it special. Our international quality faculty are performing innovative research and are supported by creative postdoctoral fellows, staff and students. Their many efforts reflect well on the department, the university and the state of Colorado.
David Ross, Ph.D.
Department Chairman and Professor of
Toxicology
Last updated: 6/16/08