School of Pharmacy grad students celebrated for research and communications skills
Ph.D. candidates Sara Abudahab and Akua Donkor excel in research and explanations. By Leah SmallFor VCU School of Pharmacy Sara Abudahab and Akua Donkor, Ph.D. candidates in the VCU School of Pharmacy, are researching topics that outsiders might find intimidatingly complicated — epigenetics and healthy aging and the mechanisms behind tumor formation in plants, respectively. Nonetheless, […]
Circular mRNA may improve treatments
SoP researchers are changing the shape of the fight against COVID, cancer and more. Although they’ve been effective at preventing the virus, the VCU School of Pharmacy’s Guizhi “Julian” Zhu, Ph.D., notes that mRNA molecules used in those vaccines still have room for improvement: Their linear shape makes them more susceptible to being broken down […]
Health care fellowship leads to congressional report and hearing
A position as a congressional fellow through a program from VCU School of Pharmacy, ACCP and ASHP led to a leadership role in researching and writing a congressional report on the intersection of health care and climate change. With the U.S. health care system responsible for an estimated 10% of national greenhouse gas emissions, the […]
To fight cancer recurrence, VCU experts go right to the source
By Lewis Brissman If you think of cancer as a grizzly bear, an attack isn’t the only danger you face. An equal worry is the hibernation. Dr. Umesh Desai is – metaphorically, of course – targeting the beast in both states In the VCU School of Pharmacy, Desai is chairman of the Department of Medicinal […]
DNA responses to childhood trauma offer clues on which children will have long-term health issues as adults
The biomarkers could help predict which children are most at risk of trauma-related health issues as an adult, long-term study finds. By Olivia Trani New research from Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Pharmacy brings the medical community closer to identifying children with the highest need for treatment and intervention following traumatic events. The study, published in Molecular Psychiatry, found […]
Graduate Awards celebrate research, scholarship, service
The 2022 Graduate Awards luncheon recognized success among the SoP’s graduate students. In his keynote speech, Dean Joseph DiPiro, Pharm.D., told the audience of students, faculty and staff, “We are in the right field. There is a lot of need and a lot of opportunity in pharmacy.” A highlight was the presentation of the first […]
Opioids and HIV: The mystery of the ‘bouncer’ in the brain
By Greg WeatherfordVCU SoP News The opioid epidemic that has devastated families and lives across the U.S. in the past decade has brought along with it another deadly problem: HIV. The two conditions have long been intertwined. As the use and misuse of opioids has increased and spread, rates of HIV have as well. To make […]
Doing it all
May Abdelaziz, a VCU Alumni 10 Under 10 honoree, excels as a researcher, mother and teacher. By Leah SmallFor VCU SoP News A single word half-heard during a phone call with a colleague led May Abdelaziz, Ph.D., on a search for insights on the causes of bacterial resistance in superbugs. It’s the sort of connection […]
New $3.5M study aims for early detection of autism to help patients thrive
By Greg WeatherfordVCU School of Pharmacy In a search for the keys to autism, researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University are about to begin one of the largest and most thorough scans of the set of chemical instructions, the methylome, that regulates the activity of human genes. The goal is to identify infants who have high […]
Study: Sickle cell costs U.S. $1.5 billion per year in lost wages and productivity
Sickle cell disease causes $1.5 billion in lost wages and productivity each year in the U.S. alone, according to the first study of its kind. That comes to more than $650,000 lost over the average working life of a person living with the painful genetic disorder. Lead researcher David Holdford, Ph.D., a professor of pharmacoeconomics […]