College of Pharmacy News

Andrea C. Gore, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology and toxicology and Vacek Chair in Pharmacology, recently earned an R35 RIVER grant award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) for her lab’s research on endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and their effect on the brain. The NIEHS, which is one of the centers in the National Institutes of Health (NIH), awarded a total of $6,823,672 for eight years.

Dr. Leticia R. Moczygemba in the Division of Health Outcomes talked to ECHO, an agency that plans and implements community-wide strategies to end homelessness in Austin and Travis County, about the Interactive Care Coordination and Navigation (iCAN) program that studies how getting phones to more people living outside impacts their lives and health outcomes.

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.

P4 students, Megan Yeung, Kami Johnston and Morgan Murchison co-author a peer-reviewed blog in Pulses encouraging educators to adapt to reflect the specific needs of people who use drugs and patients with substance use disorders. This blog also highlights UT Pharmacy as a U.S. leader in substance use disorder and harm reduction education for Pharm.D. students.

Tara Law from Time writes about how few pharmacies carry buprenorphine, a life-saving drug to help treat opioid use disorder (OUD). Lucas Hill, Pharm.D., BCACP, director of the college's Pharmacy Addictions Research & Medicine (PhARM) program, offers his insight on the issue, and how the DEA's crackdown of the drug puts OUD patients at risk.

Leticia "Tish" Moczygemba, Pharm.D., Ph.D. and Andrew Wash, Pharm.D. were selected as the recipients of the 2022 grant award from the Arlyn Kloesel Endowment for Excellence in Pharmacy Practice.

A paper from UT College of Pharmacy researchers was awarded the 2021 Outstanding Paper of the Year from the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) Ambulatory Care Practice Research Network. The paper investigates the availability of buprenorphine and naloxone in Texas to treat opioid use disorder.

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.

Combining mobile health technology, or mHealth, and community outreach to improve the health outcomes of people experiencing homelessness is the target of a new study led by Division of Health Outcomes Associate Professor Leticia Moczygemba, Pharm.D., Ph.D., thanks to a five-year research grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.