Category: Research
Lai Receives AACP New Faculty Award, NIAID Grant
January 24, 2011Sam Lai, PhD, has been honored with an AACP New Faculty Award and has received a $400,000 grant from NIAID to explore trapping HIV in mucus as a way of preventing infection. American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy New Faculty Award program provides start-up funding for new pharmacy faculty’s research programs. As many as fifteen grants of up to $10,000 each will be awarded in the 2010–2011 academic year to individual faculty starting their academic careers at AACP-member colleges and schools of pharmacy in the United States. Lai also receives $1,000 from AACP for required travel to the AACP Annual … Read more
Community Pharmacy Resident Receives Grant for Vaccination Study
December 13, 2010Abbey Jenkins, PharmD, a community pharmacy resident at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has received a $2,500 grant from the Community Pharmacy Foundation for a research project looking at whether pharmacist intervention can help improve pneumococcal vaccination rates for the elderly. The project, titled “Determining Pneumococcal Vaccination Rates after a Pharmacist Conducted Medication Therapy Review (MTR),” will be conducted at two rural community pharmacies and a private physician practice. A pharmacist will conduct MTRs for patients 65 years and older who are Medicare part D beneficiaries and are patients of the pharmacies or referred by the physician. The pharmacist … Read more
Study: More Patients Fill Prescriptions When Copays Are Lower
November 15, 2010The results of a new study by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Duke University, and the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy show that patients who paid little or nothing for prescriptions filled their prescriptions more regularly. BCBSNC customers with four chronic diseases—diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and congestive heart failure—filled their prescriptions a statistically significant 1.5 percent to 3.8 percent more when there were no or reduced copayments. Such programs hold promise as an incentive for patients to take the medicines that keep them healthy and reduce their medical costs. “The results from this study provide … Read more
Lai’s Gates Grant Will Put Viruses in Sticky Situation
November 9, 2010The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations grant to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to fund a pharmacy researcher’s efforts to halt pathogens invading the body by stopping them in the mucous membranes. Samuel Lai, PhD, an assistant professor in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, had his project selected as one of sixty-five grants announced by the Gates Foundation in the fifth funding round of Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative to help scientists around the world explore bold and largely unproven ways to improve health in developing countries. The grants … Read more
School Receives $6.6 Million to Finish Developing Radiation-Scrubbing Drug
October 15, 2010The UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy has received a $6.6 million federal contract to complete work on an easily-administered medication that can help clear radioactive elements from the body. The contract, awarded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, has tasked UNC researchers led by principal investigator Michael Jay, PhD, with creating a form of diethylene triamine pentaacetic acid, commonly known as DTPA, that can be administered orally and distributed quickly to people affected by a nuclear accident or dirty-bomb attack. Dirty bombs are explosive devices designed to spread radioactive contamination. … Read more
Frye Awarded Two NCI Drug-Discovery Contracts
October 6, 2010As part of a national effort to accelerate the identification and testing of new anticancer drugs, SAIC-Frederick, Inc., a prime contractor to the National Cancer Institute has awarded two contracts totaling $2.4 million to two teams of UNC scientists to initiate the discovery of drugs for the treatment of childhood leukemia and brain tumors. Stephen Frye, PhD, professor of medicinal chemistry and director of the UNC Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, is principal investigator. Frye is also a member of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. The two centers are collaborating on … Read more
Muscular Dystrophy Trial Using Xiao’s Gene Therapy Yields Surprise
October 6, 2010A clinical trial using a technique designed by Xiao Xiao, PhD, to treat the genetic defect that causes the most common form of muscular dystrophy has uncovered an unexpected aspect of the disease. The trial, based on therapy designed by scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, discovered that some patients mount an immune response to a muscle-building protein they aren’t supposed to have. The puzzling result suggests that a number of muscular-dystrophy patients—who were once thought to be completely devoid of the protein dystrophin—have immune systems that are actually primed by the prior … Read more
School’s PhD Program Places Highly in NRC Ratings
September 30, 2010The PhD program in pharmaceutical sciences at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy is highly rated in a new assessment conducted by the National Research Council. The rankings were part of the NRC’s long-anticipated release of assessments for research doctorate programs at 212 U.S. colleges and universities, the first conducted since 1995 and only the third ever undertaken. The NRC evaluated more than 5,000 programs in sixty-two fields. The results were released on September 28. The NRC represents the national academies, which advise the federal government in all areas of science and technology. UNC submitted information about fifty-three programs as … Read more
Scientists Receive Nanotechnology Grant to Fight Pancreatic Cancer
September 28, 2010A team of UNC scientists has received a five-year $2,308,800 grant from the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Nanotechnology Platform Partnerships to address the critical need for early diagnosis of and more effective treatments for pancreatic cancer. Wenbin Lin, PhD, professor of chemistry and pharmacy, and Jen Jen Yeh, MD, assistant professor of surgery, are the principal investigators. Leaf Huang, PhD, Fred Eshelman Distinguished Professor and chair of molecular pharmaceutics in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, is the co-investigator. All are members of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Lin is a faculty member in the UNC College of Arts … Read more
NCI Awards $13.6 Million to UNC Nanotech Center
September 24, 2010Leaf Huang, PhD, and Russ Mumper, PhD, of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy are among the project managers who will benefit from a five-year, $13.6 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Carolina Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence based at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, for research to improve the diagnosis and treatment of cancer through applying or using advances in nanotechnology. The grant will support the continued work of the center, which was launched in 2005 as part of NCI’s Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer. The C-CCNE, one of … Read more