College of Pharmacy News

Molecular Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery professor Maria A. Croyle, Ph.D. earned this year's Best Paper Award from the University Co-op Research Excellence Awards, presented by UT's Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarship and Creative Endeavors and the University Co-operative Society.

The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) has released its grant research funding awards for the upcoming year. All three awarded research projects at The University of Texas at Austin involve College of Pharmacy faculty.

Somshuvra Mukhopadhyay, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., associate professor in the Division of Pharmacology and Toxicology and Hamm Centennial Fellow in Pharmacy, and a team of researchers have released new findings defining the first homeostatic regulatory pathway for manganese in mammalian systems. Identifying these pathways opens up new possible options to prevent or treat manganese-induced parkinsonism and other disorders linked to elevated manganese exposure.

The University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy moved up in several research funding categories, as reported in the newly-released rankings from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP). The college rose to #8 nationally in total research funding during the 2019-2020 fiscal year, compared to #9 in 2018-2019.

Three researchers from the College of Pharmacy won an award from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) Foundation. Leticia R. Moczygemba, Pharm.D., Ph.D., Carolyn M. Brown, Ph.D. and Michael Johnsrud, Ph.D., R.Ph. were awarded $5,000 from the PhRMA Foundation for their proposal to advance racial and ethnic representation in value assessments.

Live subject testing results from the Williams Lab show that dry powder inhalation could be a potent and effective delivery method of the antiviral remdesivir to treat patients affected by COVID-19.

Associate Professor Somshuvra Mukhopadhyay, M.B.B.S., Ph.D. wins the 2020 Co-op Research Excellence Award for Best Paper. The awards are presented each year by the Office of the Vice President for Research and the University Co-operative Society.

Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies John H. Richburg, Ph.D. received notice from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarding him a research grant for a five-year term. The NIH’s grant award for Dr. Richburg’s research totals $2,694,316.

A team of researchers in the college, led by Robert O. (Bill) Williams III and Hugh D. Smyth, is investigating varying methods of drug delivery to repurpose existing drugs in order to treat and prevent serious COVID-19 virus symptoms in patients.

Researchers in the lab of Dr. Maria Croyle have developed a peelable lightweight film that stabilizes biologics, is inexpensive, and withstands extreme temperature changes. The technology has already demonstrated proof of concept for model Ebola and H1N1 vaccines, and may prove an effective method of delivery for future treatments, such as for coronavirus that causes COVID-19.