|
|
| School of Pharmacy > Department of Pharmaceutics > About Pharmaceutics > Review of the Program | |||||
|
Mission Statement and Goals Pharmaceutics pertains to the delivery, disposition and effectiveness of drugs in the human body. It encompasses a molecular evaluation of drug metabolism and transport processes and the study of genetic, environmental and disease-related factors that control or affect those processes, as well as the fundamental mathematical relationships between enzyme/transporter function, blood concentration-time profiles and the spectrum of pharmacological effects. The Department of Pharmaceutics is responsible for instruction and research in the discipline of Pharmaceutics at the graduate and undergraduate level within the University of Washington, and service to citizens of the State of Washington and national and international public communities.
The faculty in Pharmaceutics provides training and expertise in drug formulation, delivery and disposition to students seeking the Pharm.D. degree. Up until the early 1970's, training of the pharmacist emphasized the fundamentals of drug compounding and dispensing. With the formation of the Pharmaceutics department in 1980 and the evolving of role of the pharmacist as a manager of safe and effective drug therapies, the pharmaceutics curriculum expanded to include an understanding of drug delivery systems and the biological fate of drugs in the body. Taking advantage of a long-standing research program on drug-drug interactions, the faculty in Pharmaceutics currently provides students with a core understanding of the biological mechanisms by which one drug can adversely alter the disposition of another, and the potential clinical consequences of these changes. Looking forward, we envision that there will be a similar integration of principles from the emerging discipline of Pharmacogenetics into Pharmaceutical Care, with the individualization of drug selection and dosing. This is an expanding area of departmental and school-wide research and we believe that formal training in this area will become an essential element of the Pharmacist's education. The Department of Pharmaceutics is also responsible for the training of students seeking a Ph.D. or M.S. in Pharmaceutical Sciences as a prerequisite qualification for a career in the drug industry or as an academic scientist. In addition to the development and completion of a novel body of research, our students must master the inter-relationships between in vitro and in vivo drug disposition. Areas of specialization for Pharmaceutics graduate students have generally followed the research interests of the faculty: they include drug biotransformation and mechanisms of metabolically based drug-drug interactions, drug transport kinetics and the biology of inter-individual variability in drug disposition as it relates to drug safety and efficacy.
|
||||
|
©2007 University of Washington School of Pharmacy
|
