| |
DIVISION OF PHARMACEUTICS
The Division of Pharmaceutics at the College of Pharmacy has a long-standing national reputation in drug delivery, pk/pd and physical pharmacy. The Division has also led by example in promoting inter-disciplinary activities and collaborations in the College of Pharmacy. For example, several of our faculty have joint appointments in chemical and biochemical engineering as part of the growing relationship between the College of Pharmacy and the College of Engineering.
Last year was an exceptional year for collaborations in the Division of Pharmaceutics. Maureen Donovan, PhD, associate professor, received a five-year, $1 million grant to study the transport of drugs from the nasal cavity to the brain. The NIH grant, “Bypassing the Blood Brain Barrier: Modulation of Transporters in the Nasal Mucosa,” will enable Donovan and her colleagues to study the pathways drugs use to travel between the nasal cavity and the brain. Donovan will work with Todd Scheetz, PhD, assistant professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences and biomedical engineering, and Daniel Bonthius, associate professor of pediatrics, neurology, and anatomy and cell biology.
Peter Veng-Pedersen, PhD, professor, in collaboration with John Widness, MD, professor of pediatrics, and colleagues, received a renewal of their NIH funded program grant that evaluates the PK/PD profiles of erythropoietin amongst other research focuses. Douglas Flanagan, PhD, professor, continued his productive collaboration with John W. Turner, PhD, professor of physiology and pharmacology, metabolism, and cardiovascular sciences, at the University of Toledo, evaluating immunocontraception in feral horses. Lee Kirsch, PhD, associate professor, continued his collaborative work with Larry Fleckenstein, PharmD, professor of clinical and administrative pharmacy, developing and validating a high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectroscopy assay for determination of artsunate and its metabolite dihydroartemisinin in human plasma. Jennifer Fiegel, PhD, assistant professor, has established a collaborative relationship with a group at the University of Colorado that is showing significant promise and Vijay Kumar, PhD, associate professor, completed a collaborative tissue engineering focused sabbatical in Switzerland.
In addition to a number of national collaborations, Aliasger K. Salem, PhD, assistant professor, has established collaborations with UI faculty in the the colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dentistry, Engineering and the Carver College of Medicine. In collaboration with Sarah Larsen, PhD, associate professor of chemistry, Salem was awarded $132,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop drug and gene delivery applications for novel zeolite nanomaterials. He also received seed funding from the Biological Sciences Funding Program (BSFP) in collaboration with Galen Schneider, DDS, PhD, professor of dentistry, that has resulted in publications and grant submissions to the NIH. Salem also received young investigator awards from the American Cancer Society, the UI/Mayo Clinic Lymphoma SPORE and the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers of America Foundation for his collaborative work on developing cancer vaccines with George Weiner, M.D., professor of internal medicine and director of the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center. This research has resulted in several publications and grant submissions to the NIH in 2007. Finally Salem also initiated a collabaration with David Lubaroff, M.D., professor of urology and microbiology, on the development of a prostate cancer vaccine. This project received a 2.6 percentile in its first submission to the NIH and will likely be funded in 2008.
Dale Eric Wurster, PhD, professor, has collaborated both in research and education. In research, external to his focused physical pharmacy based research, he has used his surface analysis skills for baseline studies of the clay minerals society source clays. In addition, in collaboration with John Keller, MS, PhD, professor of dentistry and dean of the UI Graduate College, and Sandra Barkan, PhD, visiting assistant professor, he evaluated the development and evolution of interdisciplinary graduate programs at The University of Iowa.
On the education front, Salem and Barbara Kelley from the Information Technology group of the College of Pharmacy collaborated on a project to implement clicker technology into pharmaceutics classes. These joint faculty-staff efforts have resulted in improved class participation and an instructional improvement award from the coucil of teaching to further develop this technology innovation. These examples are a small representation of the diverse range of collaborations that have been established by faculty in the division of pharmaceutics and highlight the pharmaceutics faculties growing commitment to team based approaches in research and education.
|
|
