Daniel Crona, Pharm.D., Ph.D., will join the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy as a tenure-track assistant professor on October 1. Crona will also have an appointment at the North Carolina Cancer Hospital where he will work as a clinical pharmacist specialist in genitourinary oncology.
Crona’s research has focused on identifying and validating novel genetic variants associated with survival in patients with advanced or metastatic kidney cancer. Discovery of these variants could help health-care providers identify the patients that would benefit most from different oral chemotherapeutics.
“Dan Crona is a highly promising young investigator in oncology pharmacogenomics, and he will be a valuable addition to our School,” says Angela Kashuba, Pharm.D., chair of DPET and the John A. and Deborah McNeill Distinguished Professor. “His expertise will fill important gaps in both the teaching and research missions of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and will complement the multidisciplinary team of clinician scientists at UNC Hospitals and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.”
In his new role in DPET, Crona says he plans to evaluate how genetic variations can lead to differences in the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of therapeutic treatments used in oncology, and how inter-individual differences in clinical pharmacology can affect survival and toxicity phenotypes. These projects will serve as the basis for NIH grant applications that he is developing.
As an assistant professor, Crona will also teach required and elective courses in the professional program.
Crona received his Pharm.D. from the University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2010 where he graduated with highest distinction and research honors. That same year, Crona began the Ph.D. program in pharmaceutical sciences at the School with DPET. While a graduate student, Crona served as an instructor for multiple professional and graduate courses at the School, as well as for courses at the UNC School of Medicine. He also provided clinical services at the cancer hospital in genitourinary oncology, the UNC Supportive Care consult service and the NCCH Infusion Center.
In 2014 he was offered a UNC/Duke/Hamner Institute Collaborative T32 Postdoctoral Fellowship in the clinical pharmacology training program, received the GSK Dissertation Fellowship and was awarded the Katheryne A. Brewington Award, an honor given annually to the School’s top Ph.D. student.
Crona successfully defended his dissertation research, which identified novel germline variants that were associated with the overall survival in patients with kidney cancer that were treated with sorafenib, in April 2015.