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Five UW profs named AAAS Fellows Rene H. Levy: For distinguished contributions to the treatment of epilepsy, and for fostering the development and rational use of new drugs and therapeutic modalities. Levy joined the UW faculty in 1970, after earning his doctorate in pharmaceutical chemistry from the University of California, San Francisco. His work has included the Metabolism and Transport Drug Interaction Database presently licensed by UWTechTransfer to pharmaceutical scientists throughout the world; he is also a former chairman of the Department of Pharmaceutics.
NIH Grant Awarded to the Department of Pharmaceutics for study on how pregnant women handle drugs
The UW Department of Pharmaceutics won an unprecedented grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that will enable UW researchers to examine how drugs are handled by pregnant women. The University of Washington was one of just 11 universities nationwide to receive this prestigious Specialized Centers of Research (SCOR) grant from the NIH. "The SCOR initiative marks a great leap forward in NIH support for multidisciplinary research on women's health," said Dr. Vivian W. Pinn, Director of the NIH Office of Research on Women's Health (ORWH). Taking its lead from the Federal Government, which has called for greater research in this area, the ORWH awarded the Department of Pharmaceutics $1,106,289 a year for five years (Sept' 02 - July' 07). The Department of Pharmaceutics was selected for this grant on the basis of having three highly meritorious interdisciplinary research projects. This first-of-its-kind grant will enable School researchers to conduct projects that have the single goal of determining how drugs are absorbed, distributed and eliminated by pregnant women. The projects will also investigate how drugs are transported across the placenta. Finding from these studies will help physicians prescribe more appropriate doses of drugs to treat pregnant women and their unborn child. The grant is headed up by Dr. Jash Unadkat (Pharmaceutics) and involves three distinct projects. In the first by Drs. Unadkat, Thummel (Pharmaceutics), Hebert (Pharmacy) and Easterling (Obs. & Gynecol.) will address why disposition of anti-HIV protease inhibitors is altered during pregnancy. The second project by Drs. Mao and Unadkat, will study the role of the Breast Cancer Resistance Protein, an efflux transporter, in the disposition of drugs during pregnancy. The third project by Dr. Vadivel Ganapathy of the Medical College of Georgia will focus on the role of an influx transporter, the Organic Cation Transporter 3, in the disposition of drugs during pregnancy. Complimentary to this research program, the School of Pharmacy subsequently received a $2.8 million grant (July' 04 - June' 08) from the National Institution of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD) to research the clinical pharmacology of drugs in pregnant woman. (Dr. Mary Hebert, PI; Pharmacy; Drs. Unadkat and Easterling, Co-PI). The UW Obstetric Fetal Pharmacology Unit will join three other grant recipients in establishing the infrastructure to begin to decipher why drugs are handled differently in pregnant women as opposed to postpartum and what the implications are for the mother and fetus. The SCOR grant is a critical component of the Department of Pharmaceutics expansion of research in the direction of drug transport. Drug transport is emerging as an important contributor to drug disposition. For this reason, as part of its strategic plans, the Department of Pharmaceutics has identified expansion of research in this area as a major goal. In this regard, the Department recently recruited two new faculty members, Dr. Joanne Wang and Dr. Qingcheng Mao whose background, expertise and research is focused in the area of drug transport.
Quoted in Reuters Health News (Drug & Device Development) Reuters Health Information (2003-12-12) Lipid-associated indinavir targets drug delivery to lymph nodes By David Dougla NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Work in macaque monkeys indicates that use of lipid-associated indinavir complexes greatly increases localization of the HIV protease inhibitor in lymphoid tissues, researchers report. The technique might help eradicate reservoirs of latent virus As Dr. Rodney J. Y. Ho told Reuters Health, "we believe with this simple lymphatic drug targeting strategy, low level or latent virus found in lymphoid tissues can be contained and perhaps eliminated, with a combination of HIV drugs delivered via this approach. Dr. Ho and colleagues at the University of Washington, Seattle, produced stable lipid-drug complexes based on the pH-dependent lipophilicity of indinavir. In a series of experiments described in the December 1st issue of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, they studied use of soluble or lipid-associated indinavir in healthy and HIV-2 infected macaques The lipid-associated approach yielded a 10-fold reduction in indinavir peak plasma concentration and a 6-fold increase in terminal half-life. Furthermore, indinavir concentrations in peripheral and visceral lymph nodes were as much as 2270% higher than in plasma In humans given soluble lipid-free indinavir, the researchers point out, the corresponding proportion is less than 35% In addition, administration of lipid-associated indinavir 20 mg/kg per day to infected animals resulted in significantly reduced viral RNA load and increased CD4 T cell number concentrations "We foresee that the lymphoid targeted, lipid-indinavir drug (complex) therapy could be used as adjunct to current oral HAART for AIDS patients to lower virus load in the lymphoid system," Dr. Ho said. "Controlling virus in lymph nodes may further delay the disease progression in AIDS patients. Furthermore, "the lymphatic drug targeting strategy reported is generally applicable for other disease indications such as controlling tumor metastases involving lymph nodes. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr 2003;34:387-397.
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©2007 University of Washington School of Pharmacy
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