Category: Divisions
Two Student-Faculty Tandems Earn AACP Walmart Scholarships
March 25, 2010Community pharmacy resident Ashley Branham, PharmD, PY4 student Tsu-Hsuan “Sherry” Yang, and their faculty mentors have won Walmart Scholarships from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. This marks the fourth consecutive year that members of the School have won Walmart Scholarships. The awards, which began in 2005, aim to strengthen the recipients’ skills and commitment to careers in academic pharmacy through their participation at the AACP Annual Meeting and Seminars. Each student-faculty pair will receive $1,000 to help cover registration and travel expenses for the AACP Annual Meeting and Seminars on July 10-14 in Seattle, Washington. Branham, mentored by … Read more
Pollack to Be Dean at Washington State
March 18, 2010Gary Pollack, PhD, executive associate dean of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will be the new dean of the Washington State University College of Pharmacy starting August 1. “I am absolutely delighted that Pollack has accepted our offer,” says Warwick Bayly, provost and executive vice president of WSU, in a news release. “He has an outstanding academic record and is a perfect fit when it comes to leading the pursuit of the College of Pharmacy’s and Washington State University’s strategic goals.” Pollack, who has been at UNC since 1984, is … Read more
Singleton Start Up Inks Deal, Attracts Funding
March 11, 2010A new company founded on the research of associate professor Scott Singleton, PhD, hopes to restore or boost the effectiveness of antibiotics that have been steadily losing ground to increasingly resistant bacteria. Synereca Pharmaceuticals was created to address the growing problem of bacterial resistance to current antibiotics. The company aims to develop orally active drugs that support existing antibiotics by inhibiting the enzyme RecA, Singleton says. RecA is the focus of his work and is a key factor in bacterial DNA repair and in the development and transmission of antibiotic resistance. “It’s astounding the diversity of roles played by RecA,” … Read more
MCNP Graduate Student Receives TraCS Grant
March 2, 2010Jui-Hua Hsieh, a graduate student in the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products, has received a $2,000 grant from the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute to fund her project, “Design of Novel Therapeutic Agents against Mer Kinase for Cancer Treatment.” Elevated expression and activity of the enzyme Mer kinase are associated with various types of cancers, and researchers have found very few small-molecules inhibitors against Mer kinase so far, Hsieh says. Hsieh’s project will try to identify novel, potent Mer kinase inhibitors. She will use computer programs to virtually screen large libraries of chemical structures and use … Read more
NIH Funds Grad Student’s Enzymatic Inhibitions
February 25, 2010Sherket Peterson, a graduate student in the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products, has received an NIH award worth approximately $100,000 over three years to support her efforts to create an inhibitor for the enzyme heparanase. “In our lab, we study heparin and heparan sulfate, but my project is related to heparanase, which is an enzyme that acts on heparan sulfate,” Peterson says. “This enzyme has been linked to a wide array of cancers.” In cancer and certain other health conditions, heparanase often becomes too abundant or unregulated. In cancer, this enzymatic excess can promote metastasis (the spread of … Read more
Roth McClurg Appointed to ACCP Research Institute Board
February 10, 2010Mary Roth McClurg, PharmD, has been appointed to a two-year term on the board of trustees of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy Research Institute. She is an associate professor in the Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy. The Research Institute is the research arm of ACCP and works to advance pharmacotherapy by supporting and promoting research, training, and educational programs. The board is responsible for the general oversight and direction of the institute.
Eckel, Marciniak Named APhA Fellows
February 4, 2010Stephen Eckel, PharmD, and Macary Weck Marciniak, PharmD, faculty members in the Division of Pharmacy Practice and Experiential Education, have been named fellows of the American Pharmacists Association. They will be honored at the APhA Annual Meeting and Exposition on March 12-15 in Washington, D.C. Eckel is a clinical assistant professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and the assistant director of pharmacy at UNC Hospitals. He also oversees the School’s MS in pharmaceutical sciences program with a specialization in health-system pharmacy administration. Marciniak is a clinical associate professor at the School, where she also serves as assistant director of … Read more
Roth McClurg Baseline Study Shows Racial Differences in Medication Use by the Elderly
February 1, 2010New research by Mary Roth McClurg, PharmD, MHS, and colleagues shows that older black patients have more medication-related problems than their white counterparts, and nonadherence (not taking their medicines as directed) is a particular issue for this group. Roth McClurg is an associate professor in the Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Older adults experience a number of medication-related problems, including underuse of needed medications, use of suboptimal drugs, suboptimal dosing, and non-adherence, which not only have negative effects on their health and quality of life, but cost the health care industry billions … Read more
Sleath Named Interim Chair of DPOP
January 20, 2010Professor Betsy Sleath, PhD, has been named the interim chair of the Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She will officially assume the position’s duties on March 1. Mick Murray, PharmD, MPH, is stepping down as chair of the division and returning to Indiana where he will assume the positions of Distinguished Professor of Pharmacy Practice and Endowed Chair of Medication Safety at Purdue University School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and executive director of the Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Improvement and Research at Regenstrief Institute. According to Dean Robert Blouin, the School … Read more
Dinkins Honored for One-to-One Patient Care
January 13, 2010When a customer showed up with fifteen new prescriptions and old medication bottles for his mother, who was too sick to come to the pharmacy, Lisa Dinkins, PharmD, compared the prescriptions with the patient’s old medications to check for problems such as omissions, duplications, and potential drug interactions. She then drew up a new medications list for the patient, clearly marked the old bottles of medicine that were no longer needed, and discussed the new medications at length with the son until he could repeat back to her how he would administer them to his mother while she was ill. … Read more