Collaborative Areas of Research Excellence (CARE)

This collaborative research area is focused on the discovery and optimization of novel chemical leads targeted to disease-related proteins for research tools and therapeutics, and the training of the next generation of drug discovery scientists.

Community pharmacies play a crucial role in our everyday lives by serving as accessible and trusted health hubs. A number of our Pharmacy Practice faculty focus on Community-based Pharmacy Practice Innovation, helping to ensure that local pharmacies remain a pivotal component of the healthcare system.

Environmental toxicants, pollutants, and chemicals can profoundly affect health and disease. Together with an individual’s genome and other influences (social, behavioral, hormonal), exposures to exogenous environmental factors predispose for cancer, endocrine disorders, and neurobehavioral and physiological disturbances.

Developmental exposure is particularly problematic due to the propensity of toxicants to cause epigenetic, genetic, and molecular reprogramming changes that set the stage for subsequent disease. Faculty in this collaborative research area have a common goal of determining effects of environmental exposures on physiology, pathophysiology, and behavior, and deciphering the underlying cellular, biochemical, and molecular responses.

The overall goal of the research of this collaborative group of faculty is to improve the public’s health and outcomes through the efficient use of scarce health care resources, and to reduce health disparities through practice-, population-, and policy-based research.

The goal of this collaborative research area is to optimize the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases through basic scientific discoveries and translation of these discoveries into clinical practice. Specific areas of expertise include 1) identifying pathogenic mechanisms of organisms and multi-drug resistance, 2) development of novel therapeutics, including protein and small molecule therapeutics, vaccines, microbiome-targeted therapies, immunological-based therapeutics, and other anti-infective technologies, and 3) evaluating population-based epidemiology and health outcomes related to prevention and treatment.

Research approaches in this area include basic science, preclinical animal studies, human clinical trials, pharmacoepidemiology, and implementation science.

The goal of research in this focus area is to conduct basic research on mechanisms of how cancer develops and progresses and to identify new molecular targets for cancer prevention and treatment. In addition, researchers are also involved in developing novel agents and drug delivery systems for cancer prevention and treatment. Finally, there is an emphasis on training the next generation of cancer researchers.

The goal of research in this focus area is to conduct basic research on mechanisms of how drugs of abuse, particularly alcohol, produce their rewarding and behavioral effects through changes in brain function at multiple levels of analysis: molecular, cellular, circuit, systems, neurochemical, and behavioral.

By producing fundamental new knowledge on these mechanisms, new and improved therapies could be developed for addiction and other brain diseases. In addition, the faculty in this area are committed to recruiting, training, and retaining the next generation of diverse researchers in neuropharmacology and addiction.

This collaborative research area is focused on bridging basic science and clinical therapeutics leading to the discovery of new drug delivery systems that can be brought to market.