Pharmaceutical Sciences
The Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences is comprised of 12 individuals representing the disciplines of biomedical sciences, pharmacology, medicinal chemistry, biochemistry, pharmaceutics, and pharmacy administration. The faculty is responsible for providing instruction in several content areas in the professional Pharm.D. program including physiology, pharmacology, pharmaceutics, medicinal chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacogenomics, biotechnology, financial management, health care systems, human resource management, and pharmacy law and ethics. Pharmaceutical sciences faculty work closely with their counterparts in pharmacy practice to provide a stimulating and contempory learning environment for our students. An additional pharmacologist will be hired for the 2007-2008 academic year. Members of the Department have either prior faculty experience or extensive postdoctoral training.
The Department occupies office and laboratory space in the new University Park 220 building and office space in the University Park 200 facility. The University Park 220 building contains 3400 square feet of research space suitable for performing research in molecular and cellular biology, drug design and development, and drug delivery and dosage form design. Active areas of research in the Department include mechanisms associated with the blood-brain barrier regulation of drug delivery to the central nervous system, mechanisms involved in b-cell proliferation and survival in types 1 and 2 diabetes, investigation of implantable materials for tissue engineering, synthetic medicinal chemistry, natural products chemistry, computational chemistry and molecular modeling, surface science phenomena, single nucleotide polymorphisms in genomic DNA, health-related quality of life, health outcomes, and effective teaching practices and student learning outcomes.
Recent items of equipment added in the Department include molecular modeling hardware and software, differential scanning calorimeter, inverted microscope, high pressure liquid chromatographs, ultraviolet spectrophotomer, infrared spectrometer, and a real-time PCR Additional items of equipment will be added during the 2006-2007 academic year.
