Category: Centers
Benhabbour Spin Off Earns UNC KickStart Award
July 13, 2017A company founded by Rahima Benhabbour, Ph.D., a faculty member at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has received a KickStart award from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to help create the first 3-D printed intravaginal ring designed to treat a women’s health condition. Benhabbour created AnelleO along with graduate student Rima Janusziewicz from the UNC Department of Chemistry. The company’s work is centered on 3D printed intravaginal rings that can be used as a platform for treating a wide range of women’s health conditions. “3D printing allows us to introduce geometric complexity to the rings that … Read more
Postdoc Elizabeth Wayne Reflects on TED Experience
June 28, 2017Elizabeth Wayne, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow studying how immune cells can be used to fight cancer, gave a TED talk on the main stage at TED 2017 in Vancouver, Canada. Wayne was announced as a TED fellow in January 2017. Wayne’s research focuses on targeted cancer therapy, attaching cancer-fighting genes to immune cells that are already being delivered by the body’s immune system to cancerous tumors. The idea, Wayne said, is to only treat the cancer itself rather than using treatments like chemotherapy, which cannot discriminate between damaging good cells and cancer cells. Of the weeklong event, the talk itself … Read more
McGinty Awarded 2017 Pew-Stewart Scholarship to Pursue Cancer Research
June 15, 2017Robert McGinty, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has been selected as a 2017 Pew-Stewart Scholar for Cancer Research. The scholarship awards $240,000 over a four-year term to early-career scientists whose research may accelerate discovery and advance progress to a cure for cancer. McGinty initially applied to the Pew Scholars Program but was offered the Pew-Stewart Scholarship instead because of the relevancy of his work to cancer treatment. McGinty studies the mechanisms governing epigenetic signaling at the nucleosome and chromatin levels. Nucleosomes are a basic … Read more
Whitepaper: Enhanced Pharmacy Services Offer Quality and Cost Improvement for Medicaid
May 23, 2017Policy recommendations issued by the Center for Medication Optimization through Practice and Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill call for Medicaid reforms to optimize the benefits of medication and include community pharmacists as an important part of the health-care team. Building on existing efforts in North Carolina, the recommendations include the following: Using models developed from the growing Community Pharmacy Enhanced Services Network to allow health plans to develop community pharmacy pay-for-performance models focused on overall cost of care and quality. Testing the community pharmacy enhanced services care management model within health plans and comparing plan … Read more
Second Carolina Nanoformulation Workshop Shares Discoveries in Nanomedicine
April 18, 2017From March 13 to 17, scientists from industry and academia came together at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy to learn about and to get hands-on experience with the latest advances in nanomedicine at the second annual Carolina Nanoformulation Workshop. The workshop is a unique blend of classroom and hands-on training that stresses application and participation. It featured 18 speakers and two days of seminars for more than 30 participants followed by three days of practical experience in the laboratories of the School’s Center for Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery. The goal of the CNW is to provide safe and effective … Read more
UNC, Russian Scientists Create Biological Shield against Nerve Gas, Pesticides
April 3, 2017Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Moscow State University have created a new way to package and deliver a potent enzyme that can reverse — and even prevent — poisoning by pesticides and nerve gas, including VX and sarin, which has been used worldwide as a chemical weapon and estimated to be 26 times more deadly than cyanide. The team, led by UNC-Chapel Hill’s Alexander “Sasha” Kabanov, Ph.D., Dr.Sci., Mescal S. Ferguson Distinguished Professor, figured out how to wrap the powerful enzyme, called organophosphorus hydrolase, in a tiny nanoparticle, which could be taken before, during … Read more
Pharmacy’s Robert McGinty Named 2017 Searle Scholar
March 31, 2017Robert McGinty, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has been selected as a 2017 Searle Scholar. He is the first Searle Scholar named at the University of North Carolina in the past 10 years. The Searle Scholars Program named 15 scientists as Searle Scholars for 2017. Recipients are awarded $300,000 in flexible funding to support their work over the next three years. The Searle Scholars Program makes grants to selected universities and research centers to support the independent research of exceptional young faculty in the … Read more
Mosedale Receives Sternfels Prize for Proposal to Better Predict Liver-Injury Risk
March 9, 2017Merrie Mosedale, Ph.D., a research assistant professor in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has been awarded the $35,000 Sternfels Prize for Drug Safety Innovation for her proposal to find a molecular “fingerprint” to help identify people at risk for idiosyncratic, or unexplained, adverse drug reactions. Mosedale is a member of the UNC Institute for Drug Safety Sciences. The Sternfels Prize was created to encourage researchers to find ways to make using pharmaceuticals less risky. It is awarded to the most important and testable idea to reduce life-threatening drug-drug, drug-disease or pharmacogenomic interactions. Mosedale’s research focuses on drug-induced liver injury, … Read more
Simple Genetic Test Promises Better Outcomes in Heart Stent Patients
November 15, 2016Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have found that a quick, precise genetic test can significantly reduce the risk of cardiovascular events by helping to identify a more effective medication for some heart patients who receive a stent. The test identifies a genetic deficiency that affects the body’s ability to activate clopidogrel, a common anti-clotting drug given after a coronary artery stent is inserted. During a recent multi-institutional study from NIH’s Implementing Genomics in Practice Network, researchers at UNC, University of Florida Health and other sites throughout the country analyzed medical outcomes in 1,815 patients who … Read more
NCI Renews Partnership with UNC to Seek New Cancer Drugs
October 6, 2016The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will pursue treatments for specific cancer targets as a specialized member of the National Cancer Institute’s renewed Experimental Therapeutics, or NExT, program through a contract with Leidos Biomed and its Frederick National Lab in Frederick, Maryland. Because of its unique expertise, UNC has been designated a specialized center in the NCI’s Chemical Biology Consortium, the NExT program’s discovery engine. The university’s team is led by Stephen Frye, Ph.D., Fred Eshelman Distinguished Professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and director of the school’s Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery. … Read more