Category: Research
Shawn Hingtgen advances his research on pediatric cancer
August 23, 2023Professor Shawn Hingtgen, Ph.D. will further his research on pediatric brain cancer patients with funding from the Ian’s Friends Foundation for his joint effort with project lead Scott Floyd, M.D., Ph.D., of Duke University around living tissue brain slices. “Ian’s Friends is an amazing foundation that is changing the lives of children with brain cancer. We are so grateful for all their incredible support over the years,” said Hingtgen. “This new award will allow us to explore exciting new aspects of the living tissue brain slice platform. Working in partnership with Dr. Scott Floyd and his team at Duke University, … Read more
Owen Fenton receives NIH award to help fund research to treat skin cancer
August 9, 2023Owen Fenton, Ph.D. received the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Trailblazer R21 Award. He will receive a total of $601,122 over three years for his project focused on developing new medicines to treat skin cancer that are safer and more effective than current therapies. This project will be conducted in collaboration with co-investigator Stergios Moschos, M.D., associate professor of medicine at the UNC School of Medicine. “My group focuses broadly within the field of genetic medicine, with a particular focus on developing mRNA therapies for the treatment of disease. We are excited to receive this award which will enable us … Read more
Eshelman Institute for Innovation establishes research collaboration with Aston University
August 1, 2023As part of a new collaboration, the Eshelman Institute for Innovation (EII), within the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, will work with Aston University in the U.K. on a three-year project focused on preventing damage caused by swelling of the central nervous system (CNS). The EII was established in 2014 with a $100 million commitment from Fred Eshelman, Pharm.D, and provides translational grant funding to Carolina faculty for therapeutic research focused on oncology, infectious disease, and neuroscience (including rare diseases); however, the EII welcomes ideas for devices and diagnostics, and other therapeutic areas and services. Through their grant mechanism, the … Read more
Global inspiration leads to presentation at AACP
July 26, 2023Isabel Cheng, Pharm.D. candidate Class of 2024, started as a student at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy during the pandemic in 2020, which ended up being the inspiration for her research on vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine hesitancy has always been present but became even more evident during COVID-19 and led to Cheng expanding a vaccine champion curriculum from the University College London (UCL) to Carolina. Cheng discovered the vaccine champion curriculum at UCL when she was vice president of PharmAlliance in early 2021. PharmAlliance is a partnership between the School, UCL and Monash University in Australia. After hearing about the … Read more
Helping oncology patients avoid acute care events
July 12, 2023For oncology patients, emergency visits and unplanned hospital stays are common. Those who have been marginalized because of race, ethnicity, income or other factors are even more likely to experience one of these acute care events. As part of the University’s North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Insititute (NCTraCS) renewal, the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy’s Jennifer Elston Lafata, Ph.D., professor in the Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy and her colleague, Jake Stein, M.D., MPH, assistant professor at the UNC School of Medicine, have received funding as co-principal investigators for a project focused on developing and identifying a process … Read more
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University to be awarded up to $50 million from the FDA for new research center
July 11, 2023The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will award up to $50 million over five years to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University to establish the Research Triangle Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation. The center will also involve collaborations with North Carolina State University and North Carolina Central University, a leading historically black university. Triangle CERSI, the newest of only five CERSIs across the country, will work with FDA scientists to perform cutting edge scientific research to better inform and support the FDA’s needs. The four other FDA-funded CERSIs include the University of … Read more
Monash University students research with CIPhER
July 5, 2023Five pharmacy students from Monash University in Australia, a PharmAlliance partner, recently completed their eight-week visiting scholars program with the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy’s Center for Innovative Pharmacy Education and Research (CIPhER). Each visiting scholar is a fourth-year honor student in Monash’s Master of Pharmacy program. They will complete the master’s course after their upcoming fifth-year internship. Mohmmed Almosawy, Yuko Ito-Kay, Rimsha Kalia, Yannee Liu and Alexandra Steel unanimously agreed that this experience enhanced their pharmacy education—particularly all the research tools and skills they learned. “This was my very first experience in research. Coming into this was very daunting, but … Read more
Study finds female authorship is underrepresented across drug delivery journals
June 28, 2023Female authorship in drug delivery related journals should increase to better represent the work of female senior authors according to a study done by UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy Professor Kristy Ainslie, Ph.D. and Associate Professor Jacqui McLaughlin, Ph.D. First and last authorship on publications is an important metric of productivity and scholarly success for trainees and professors. McLaughlin and Ainslie found that, based on 11 drug delivery related journals in 2021, scholarly papers were about one and a half times more likely to have a male first author and three times more likely to have a male last author. … Read more
School ranks No. 2 in nation in research funding with over $75 million
June 21, 2023The UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy ranks No. 2 among the nation’s pharmacy schools in total research funding according to the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. The School received over $75 million in research grants during the federal fiscal year, October 2021-September 2022 (FY22), nearly doubling the $39 million research total from 2019. There were 84 funded investigators who received $75,082,027 in awards from all funding sources. Of those awards, nearly $60 million was secured in National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards by 59 investigators. “This ranking reflects our faculty, staff and students’ dedication and commitment to advancing … Read more
Brain slice technology opens the door for personalized cancer treatment
May 15, 2023In a full-circle moment, brain cancer survivor Andrew Satterlee, Ph.D. is one step closer to helping brain cancer patients receive the personalized treatment they need. Satterlee, research assistant professor and associate director of the Brain Slice Technology Platform at the Eshelman Institute for Innovation within the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, and his team have been researching a new way to help doctors treating patients with brain cancer make personalized decisions about the drugs they give each patient. “When I was in college, I had brain surgery to remove my tumor, but there was a disagreement on what my chemotherapy … Read more