Category: Research
IPIT Study Questions FDA Genetic-Screening Guidelines for Cancer Drug
August 27, 2007Not everyone needs a genetic test before taking the cancer drug irinotecan, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should modify its prescription guidelines to say so, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Irinotecan, also known by its brand name Camptosar, is used mainly as a second-line treatment for colorectal cancer. The FDA recommends screening patients for a gene that could make them more susceptible to the harmful side effects of the drug, the most worrisome of which is neutropenia, an abnormally low number of white blood cells. In a paper published in the … Read more
Craig Lee Receives Grant from American Heart Association
July 17, 2007Craig Lee, PhD, an assistant professor at the UNC School of Pharmacy, has received a $132,000 beginning grant-in-aid from the American Heart Association. Lee will use the two-year grant, titled “P450 Epoxygenase Pathway and Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease”, to study the relationship between genetic variation in the cytochrome P450 epoxygenase pathway and mechanisms underlying the risk of cardiovascular disease. Cytochromes P450 are a metabolic enzyme family present throughout the body. The pathway Lee is studying is active in the cardiovascular system and forms epoxyeicosatrienoic acids (also known as EETs), which dilate blood vessels and have anti-inflammatory effects. About ten to twenty-five … Read more
NIH Funds Paine’s Search for a Cranberry Juice Effect
July 17, 2007Mary Paine, PhD, has been awarded a $300,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to explore interactions between foods and drugs. “We know a great deal about drug-drug interactions but comparatively little about how foods and other natural products interact with drugs,” Paine says. “Typically, the only thing patients are told about food and their medicine is whether or not they should take their pills with a meal.” Paine is interested in foods that can contribute to what has come to be called “the grapefruit juice effect.” Since the early 1990s, researchers have known that chemical compounds in grapefruit … Read more
Sleath Survey: New Mothers Often Not Asked about Depression
May 31, 2007The majority of doctors in North Carolina are unlikely to probe for signs of postpartum depression in new mothers, according to a survey conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Of the 228 physicians responding to the survey who said they had seen women for postpartum visits in the previous three months, 79 percent said they were unlikely to formally screen the patients for depression. An estimated 13 percent of new mothers are affected by postpartum depression. The study will be published June 6 in the North Carolina Medical Journal. “We believe that it is … Read more
Murray Study: Heart-Failure Patients Benefit from Pharmacist Care
May 14, 2007Heart-failure patients take their medicine more reliably when under the care of a pharmacist, resulting in fewer emergency-room visits and hospital stays and lower health-care costs, according to a study led by Michael D. Murray, PhD, the Mescal S. Ferguson Distinguished Professor at the School. According to the American Heart Association, more than five million people in the United States are in various stages of heart failure with total health-care costs exceeding $29 billion. The study, published in the June 2007 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, studied 314 low-income patients with heart failure. The participants were studied as … Read more
Farley Receives Pfizer Grant
May 4, 2007Joel Farley, PhD, an assistant professor at the UNC School of Pharmacy, has received a two-year, $130,000 grant from Pfizer Inc. for his research on the effect of Medicaid prescription restrictions on patients with mental illnesses. Farley, who is in the Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy, received the 2007 Scholars Grant in Health Policy. The supporting sponsor on the grant is Susan Blalock, PhD, Farley’s mentor and an associate professor in the division. The grant is part of Pfizer’s Medical & Academic Partnerships program, which is intended to support the career development of junior faculty. Farley will use his … Read more
Undergraduate in Singleton Lab to Present Research
April 26, 2007Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is an escalating healthcare concern. Hala Borno, an undergraduate student conducting research with Associate Professor Scott Singleton at the UNC School of Pharmacy, has produced promising results that could become the first step in a finding new solution to that problem. Borno, a junior chemistry major, will present her findings Friday, April 27, at 2:00 p.m. at the Eighth Annual Celebration of Undergraduate Research at UNC-Chapel Hill. The event will be held at the Center for Dramatic Art from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. More than ninety students across campus disciplines will present their work. Borno is … Read more
Raed Khashan Wins CCG Excellence Award
April 13, 2007Raed Khashan, a doctoral student at the UNC School of Pharmacy, has won a Chemical Computing Group Excellence Award from the American Chemical Society’s Division of Computers in Chemistry. Khashan, who is in the School’s Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products, is one of five recipients for the award. He will receive $1,150 and a copy of CCG’s Molecular Operating Environment software with a one-year license. The winners will present their work at the ACS national meeting in Boston on August 21. Khashan, who obtained his master’s degree in pharmacy at the University of Texas at Austin, entered the … Read more
McLeod Forms New Individualized Therapy Institute at UNC
March 15, 2007New Pharmacy Professor Seeks to Match the Medicine to the Patient Howard McLeod, PharmD, wants to help physicians get it right the first time when they select a medicine to treat cancer and other illnesses. He is heading a new research institute at the UNC School of Pharmacy that will find ways to match medicines to the unique makeup of the people needing them. “In cancer and almost every other area of medicine, there are multiple drugs that work,” McLeod says. “But none of them work more than half the time. So when prescribers are faced with choosing what medicine … Read more
School Rises to Eighth Nationally in NIH Funding
February 7, 2007The UNC School of Pharmacy now ranks eighth among the nation’s pharmacy schools in grants and contracts awarded by the National Institutes of Health, according to numbers compiled by the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. School researchers were awarded more than $8.2 million in research funding from the NIH in 2006, up from $5.8 million last year. The School ranked fourteenth in NIH funding in 2005 and seventeenth in 2004. “The success we have had in attracting greater NIH support over the past few years reflects how serious we are about building the School’s research enterprise,” Dean Bob Blouin … Read more