Students Secure Seven AFPE Predoctoral Fellowships

The American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education has awarded Predoctoral Fellowships in Pharmaceutical Science to seven graduate students at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Twelve applications were submitted by the School.

“This is the largest number of both AFPE applications and awards during my nine-year tenure,” says Dean Bob Blouin, PharmD. “I would like to offer my most sincere congratulations to the recipients.”

The following students in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics and the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry received the $6,500 fellowships:

• Whitney Caron (DPET). Caron had her existing AFPE fellowship renewed. Her research interests include oncology and the study of chemotherapeutic drugs, particularly nanoparticle formulations. Her current research is focused on the clearance of nanoparticle anticancer drugs by the mononuclear phagocyte system in preclinical and clinical models. Caron holds a doctor of pharmacy from the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
• Dan Crona (DPET). Crona’s current research is focused on the identification of germline pharmacogenetic variants that are prognostic for survival or predictive of toxicity in patients treated with tyrosine kinase inhibitors (i.e., renal cell carcinoma patients treated with sorafenib or sunitinib). He received his PharmD and BS in biology from the University of Colorado.
• Adam Friedman (CBMC). Friedman is pursuing novel aptamer-based biotechnologies for the stable, efficient, and specific delivery of chemotherapeutics to cancer cells, particularly those that overexpress epithelial growth factor receptor. He earned a BS in science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MA in history from East Carolina University.
• Melanie Nicol (DPET). Nicol is working to prevent HIV transmission by optimizing dosing regimens for pre-exposure prophylaxis. Her current projects includes defining pharmacodynamic endpoints in an ex vivo tissue culture model. Nicol received her doctor of pharmacy from Ohio Northern University.
• Akinyemi Oni-Orisan (DPET). Oni-Orisan is interested in personalized medicine, translational research, and cardiology. He is investigating the role of a novel therapeutic strategy in myocardial recovery and prognosis following an acute coronary syndrome. He holds a doctor of pharmacy and BS in biology from the University of Michigan.
• Michael Perfetti (CBMC). Perfetti is developing pharmacological small molecule inhibitors and in vivo fluorescent probes to gain deeper insight into the spatial and temporal function, substrate specificity, and potential mechanism of action of methyl-lysine binding domains. He holds a BS in chemistry from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MS in organic chemistry from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute.
• Nicole Zane (DPET). Zane’s research involves the ontogeny of drug-metabolizing enzymes in the neonatal and pediatric populations. She is exploring the pharmacokinetic differences associated with pediatric metabolism of voriconazole. Zane earned her BS from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and her PharmD from the University of Maryland.

Incoming graduate student Corbin Thompson also has been awarded a $7,500 Rho Chi-AFPE First Year Graduate School Fellowship.

Each year AFPE awards up to four new Predoctoral Fellowship in Pharmaceutical Science awards at $11,000 per year, up to forty-four new and renewal Predoctoral Fellowship in Pharmaceutical Science awards at $6,500 per year, and up to ten new Clinical Pharmaceutical Science Fellowships at $6,500.