College of Pharmacy News

An independent advisory committee to the FDA has determined that phenylephrine, a popular ingredient in many over-the-counter allergy and cold medicines, is ineffective in tablet form. CNN and numerous other national news outlets quote from the College of Pharmacy's Associate Dean for Healthcare Partnerships Dr. Diane Ginsburg, who serves on the committee, regarding this decision.

Division Head and Professor of Pharmacology & Toxicology Karen Vasquez, Ph.D. published in the latest issues of Nature Reviews Genetics regarding repetitive elements in the human genome. Once considered "junk DNA," they are now known to adopt more than a dozen alternative DNA structures. These dynamic conformations can act as functional genomic elements involved in DNA replication and transcription, chromatin organization and genome stability.

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.

Division Head and Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology Karen Vasquez, Ph.D. appeared on BBC World Service's Science in Action to talk about Z-DNA. Dr. Vasquez's research focuses on DNA damage and repair, genomic instability, gene targeting, DNA structure and cancer therapeutics.

Division of Pharmacology and Toxicology researcher Pallavi Kompella, Ph.D. has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award to research at the Biomedical Research Institute of Málaga in Spain.

Dr. Diane Ginsburg has been accepted into the Leadership Texas 2021 class by Leadership Women, Inc. She will represent The University of Texas at Austin during Leadership Texas sessions through November 2021.