College of Pharmacy News

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.

Researchers in the lab of Dr. Robert O. (Bill) Williams III, Division Head and Professor of Molecular Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery at the College of Pharmacy, are advancing an innovative platform technology known as Thin Film Freezing, which could revolutionize administration, distribution and access to both vaccines and therapies.

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.

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.

Division Head and Professor of Molecular Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery Dr. Bill Williams was on KXAN News to talk about promising new data from TFF Pharmaceuticals and Augmenta Bioworks. The companies plan to develop Dr. Williams' thin film freezing technology to better deliver antibody treatment directly to the lungs of COVID patients.

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.

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.

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.