Category: Featured
Bowers Receives $1.9 M NIGMS Outstanding Investigator Award
December 7, 2017Albert Bowers, Ph.D., has received a R35 Outstanding Investigator Award worth more than $1.9 million over five years from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to study the chemoenzymatic synthesis, mode of action and evolution of natural product-based macrocycles. Bowers is an assistant professor in the School’s Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry. He is a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and affiliate member of the Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery. “Natural peptide macrocycles are promising next-generation therapeutics, due to their abilities to bind to challenging protein targets, such as protein interfaces … Read more
Pharmacy Ownership Resident Wins APhA Foundation Award
December 7, 2017Tanner Kowalski, Pharm.D., won the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy Independent Pharmacy Owner Residency Program’s first incentive grant from the APhA Foundation. This APhA incentive grant offers pharmacists, students and community pharmacy residents seed money to implement or support an existing innovative patient-care service within their pharmacy practice. Kowalski’s project analyzes the effect that transition-of-care services have on preventing hospital readmissions for pediatric patients. As part of the transition-of-care program, pharmacists review patients’ medication, identify appropriate interventions, work with providers to implement changes and provide bedside counseling to reinforce proper use of new medications. “Hospital discharge is a critical time … Read more
Fang Promoted to Associate Professor, Granted Tenure
December 4, 2017Gang Fang, Pharm.D., Ph.D., has been promoted to the rank of associate professor with tenure in the Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Fang’s research centers on evaluating treatment utilization and outcomes in populations and pharmacoepidemiology, especially in cardiovascular disease. Fang’s research primarily focuses on estimating real-world comparative treatment effectiveness and safety, identifying optimal treatment strategies, assessing treatment variation in large populations, assessing quality of care related to the treatment variation, medication adherence, and treatment disparities particularly in the elderly and minorities, and developing innovative analytical methods using observational data from large health-care-utilization … Read more
Carpenter, Corbett Win Chancellor’s Entrepreneurial Workshop
December 1, 2017UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy faculty members Amanda Corbett, Pharm.D., and Delesha Carpenter, Ph.D., M.S.P.H., were among the winners of this year’s Chancellor’s Faculty Entrepreneurship Workshop. The two-and-a-half day workshop, called “The Entrepreneurial Mindset – Maximizing Faculty Impact,” split participating faculty members into teams guided by entrepreneurship educators from across the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to create an innovative solution to a problem. At the end, the groups pitched their project to a panel of judges. Corbett is a clinical associate professor in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics and associate director of global engagement at … Read more
SGC-UNC Collaborates on $2.3 Million Project to Create Open Source Tech for Gene Discovery in Plants
November 30, 2017Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill hub of the international Structural Genomics Consortium will partner with the University of California, Davis to study the genes of rice plants responsible for root growth. The scientists will create an open source database and lay the groundwork for developing new varieties of drought resistant crops. The work is supported by a $1 million Seeding Solutions grant from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, a nonprofit established in the 2014 Farm Bill with bipartisan congressional support. The FFAR grant has been matched with funding from the UC Davis Innovation … Read more
PharmAlliance Conferences Bring Pharmacy World to Chapel Hill
November 21, 2017The members of PharmAlliance gathered in Chapel Hill Nov. 15 to 19 as the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy hosted researchers and educators from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and University College London in the United Kingdom for a five-day, two-part collaborative summit focusing on research and practice in pharmacy and the pharmaceutical sciences . PharmAlliance is a unique international partnership formed in 2015 between three global leaders in pharmacy education: UNC-Chapel Hill, Monash and UCL. The PharmAlliance partners work collaboratively to inspire and train tomorrow’s professional leaders and practitioners to transform education delivery and address major research challenges in … Read more
Cao Receives R35 Outstanding Investigator Grant
November 16, 2017Yanguang “Carter” Cao, Ph.D., has received an R35 Outstanding Investigator Grant worth $1.85 million over five years from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to create a platform to optimize antibody-based therapy. “Therapeutic antibodies have achieved great success in a variety of autoimmune diseases and cancers; however, their full therapeutic potential has not yet been realized,” said Cao, an assistant professor in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Many FDA-approved antibodies now face high therapeutic hurdles, such as inadequate efficacy when used alone and high occurrences of resistance, and many of … Read more
Pharm.D. RASP Students Win National Research Grants
November 9, 2017Amy Lin and Kevin Straughn, both third-year Pharm.D. candidates, have won nationally competitive research grants. Both students are members of the Research and Scholarship in Pharmacy program, a pathway in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy built around a mentored, in-depth scholarly project. Lin was awarded the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education’s Gateway to Research Scholarship. Her project is titled, “Developing Hippeastrine Derivatives to Treat and Understand Zika Virus Infection.” Her mentor is Qisheng Zhang, Ph.D., and her award was $5,000. Straughn was awarded the American College of Clinical Pharmacy Research Institute’s Futures Grant Student and Resident Investigator Award. His … Read more
Brouwer Receives $2.6 Million NIGMS Outstanding Investigator Research Award
November 8, 2017Kim L.R. Brouwer, Pharm.D., Ph.D., has received an Outstanding Investigator Research Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The award is a National Institutes of Health R35 Senior Investigator Award worth $2.6 million over five years. Brouwer is the W.R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics and the School’s associate dean for research and graduate education. The project is titled “Mechanisms of altered hepatic transport: Impact on drug therapy” and will run through the end of March 2022. The study will answer key questions related to the hepatic transport of bile acids … Read more
Pharmacy Grad Students Prevail in UNC Three Minute Thesis Competition
November 2, 2017Katelyn Arnold, a graduate student in the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, won first place in this year’s Three Minute Thesis competition hosted by the UNC Graduate School on Nov. 1. Aaron Devanathan, Pharm.D., a graduate student in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics, received the People’s Choice Award. Arnold received a prize of $1,000 and will represent the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the 2018 regional Three Minute Thesis competition. Arnold graduated in May 2015 with a B.S. in medicinal pharmaceutical chemistry from the University of Dayton. She works in the lab of … Read more