Gainesville Residents

United States. These seniors represent 30 percent of the graduating class, an increase in the percentage of seniors accepted into residencies from previous years, said Michael McKenzie, Ph.D., senior associate dean for professional affairs at the UF College of Pharmacy.

Though they will earn less than half the regular pharmacist’s salary as residents, they see the benefit of getting the extra experience and training to pursue careers in their pharmacy career pathway. The seniors will be residents in a variety of settings and formats including administrative, hospital practice, and community pharmacy.

Jacksonville Residents

Several seniors will combine their residency training with graduate work toward a master’s degree.Receptions for the new residents and their families were held at each of the college’s fours campus in Gainesville, Jacksonville, Orlando, and St. Petersburg. At the celebration reception on April 9, Gainesville campus students took turns marking a U.S. map with pins showing their residency locations. Ashley Lockwood is heading to Jacksonville, Fla. for her residency at

Faculty Jennifer Williams and Sven Normann (left) with St. Petersburg residents

St. Vincent Medical Center Riverside, which will include training in a variety of areas from emergency medicine to outpatient clinics. She is also considering a second-year option for a clinical specialty residency in infectious disease. Her classmate, Sarah Dawson, will be moving north to Rockingham Memorial Hospital in Harrisonburg, Va. She is also interested in applying for a second year of residency in oncology.

Rather than primarily processing prescriptions in a hospital pharmacy, Dawson said she is looking forward to working in direct patient care settings in hospital and clinics where she can help physicians make drug decisions, monitor for drug therapy issues, and interact with patients to provide information and counseling to insure quality outcomes with their medications.

Thirty-four teams nationally from AMCP Student Pharmacist Chapters entered the P&T competition, from which eight finalist teams were chosen to compete in live presentations at the AMCP Annual Meeting.

In pharmacy practice, a drug formulary process is used routinely by hospitals and managed care organizations. Medications are reviewed in these settings by a Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee to make cost-effective pharmacy services decisions based on safety, effectiveness, and value. Pharmacists in this role regularly review new and existing medications.

UF students, Nicholas Piccicacco, Danielle Underwood, Jeenal Patel, Jordana Wollman and Faculty Advisor Robert Navarro received third place in the AMCP P&T competition. The University of Southern California tied with UF for the distinction. Each school received a $1,000 scholarship. The University of California-San Francisco won the first place scholarship for $2,500 and the University of Maryland took second place for a $1,500 scholarship.

AMCP Student Chapter President Maryam Khazraee, Dr. Robert Navarro, and past president Jordana Wollmann celebrate the UF team’s award

The annual P&T Competition begins each December, and is organized locally by the UF student AMCP chapter. Seven UF student teams participated this year, and the winning team went on to represent UF at the AMCP Foundation national competition. They joined other finalist teams from Ohio Northern University, University of California-San Francisco, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Maryland, University of Minnesota, University of Southern California and University of Washington.

Co-founder and first president of the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy and the Foundation Robert Navarro, Pharm.D., a clinical professor at the UF College of Pharmacy, served as the faculty advisor for the UF team. Each student dedicated more than 50 hours in their review of an opioid drug, Nucynta ER, used to treat patients with severe, chronic pain, Navarro said.

Navarro teaches courses in managed care pharmacy that focus on prescription benefits management for UF Pharm.D. students and for the college’s Online MS Programs in pharmaceutical outcomes & policy.

“The student pharmacists apply critical drug analysis and comparison skills they will use throughout their careers for health plan drug formulary consideration,” Navarro said.

UF student pharmacist Jeffry Consaul was the winner of the 2013 Best Student Poster Contest. His poster was titled, “Methods to Detect Adverse Drug Reactions Using Automated Healthcare Databases.”

“The AMCP Foundation’s annual competitions are a great way to instill in the next generation of pharmacists the practices and priorities of managed care pharmacy,” said Edith A. Rosato, R.Ph., IOM, Chief Executive Officer of the Academy and Chair of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees.

This year’s poster contest featured 74 presentations. Tsu-Hsuan Yang from UF also received an Honorable Mention in the Best Graduate Student, Resident or Fellow Poster Category. Her poster was titled, “Improving the Participation Rate for Comprehensive Medication Reviews Through Enhancing Part D Beneficiaries’ Understanding of the Service.”

Poster award winners each receive $500 and an engraved plaque, a one-year AMCP membership, and complimentary registration for the AMCP Educational Conference this October in San Antonio, TX.

Courses Offered Summer Term:

• Pharmaceutical Regulatory Compliance
• Managed Care Pharmacy
• Psychological Approach to Medication Safety in Pharmacy
• Introduction to Clinical Toxicology
• Clinical Toxicology 1
• Herbal and Dietary Supplements

Nominated for his outstanding contributions in patents and licensing, innovative discovery and technology, Bergeron was among 101 innovators from 56 research universities and nonprofit research institutes. U.S. Commissioner for Patents Margaret Focarino, from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), led the induction of the charter fellows at the second annual meeting of the National Academy of Inventors, held at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Bergeron, who holds 200 patents, has published 200 papers, authored a text on bioorganic chemistry, and edited two books on iron overload diseases. His research interests include cancer chemotherapy, the role of metals in diseases and metal chelators. Bergeron has dedicated his career to drug discovery and development surrounding cancer and iron overload diseases affecting children, namely thalassemia and sickle cell disease.

“I would encourage young biomedical researchers to think beyond publishing and grantsmanship. These are expected pursuits in academics,” Bergeron said. “Think about bringing your discoveries forward to patients. It’s all about making the world a better place.”

As a researcher in the department of medicinal chemistry for more than 30 years, Bergeron established his expertise in cellular function and iron metabolism, leading to the development of anticancer drugs and treatments for children with iron overload disease. He has taken five drugs to clinical trials, including one that shows a promising treatment for children with iron overload. He also has discovered a new therapeutic for pancreatic cancer, for which there is virtually no effective cure. It is anticipated that human trials will be launched within a year and a half.

The UF Office of Technology and Licensing has worked with Bergeron for more than 25 years to patent and license his discoveries.

“As one of the most prolific inventors at the University of Florida, Dr. Bergeron understands, not only the needs of the patients, but also what industry is looking for,” said Office of Technology and Licensing director David Day. “He works closely with the OTL to help ensure that his discoveries are protected and transferred to industry so that new therapies are brought to the patients.”

As a group, the new fellows hold more than 3,200 U.S. patents. The charter class included eight Nobel Laureates, two fellows of the Royal Society, 12 presidents of research universities and nonprofit research institutes, 50 members of the National Academies (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine), 11 inductees of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, three recipients of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, four recipients of the National Medal of Science, and 29 American Association for the Advancement of Science fellows, among other major awards and distinctions.

A plaque naming the new fellows and their institutions will be on display at the USPTO federal building in Alexandria, Va.

“We wanted to take a step back and do within-group comparisons of black men with prostate cancer who are native-born African-American, African immigrants and Caribbean immigrants,” said Folakemi Odedina, Ph.D., a UF professor of pharmacy and associate director of health disparities for the UF Shands Cancer Center. “These groups are all genetically predisposed to get prostate cancer, but when you look at their experiences in terms of how the disease affects their lives and how they cope with it, there are a lot of differences among them.”

Odedina’s three-year study, funded by a $1.02 million Department of Defense grant, is the first to compare differences in morbidity, quality of life and survival among diverse groups of black men, who experience a 60 percent greater risk of developing prostate cancer than whites, according to the National Cancer Institute. That risk more than doubles for men with a father or brother who has had prostate cancer. Black men also are more likely to be diagnosed when their cancers are at an advanced stage, and they are more than twice as likely as white men to die of the disease.

“Our study will use ‘grounded theory’ to look at the broad continuum of prostate cancer care for these men in an effort to understand how to successfully deal with the disease through every phase, including prevention, detection, diagnosis, treatment, survivorship and advocacy,” Odedina said.

Grounded theory is a form of ethnographical analysis wherein investigators don’t begin with a hypothesis as the theoretical framework for the study. Instead, investigators begin by collecting data — in this case, interviews with black men and their wives or caregivers about their experiences, beliefs and feelings about the detection, treatment and survival of prostate cancer. During the grounded theory process of social-science super sleuthing, hypotheses are then reverse-engineered from the data.

To capture this data, 2,000 black men will be randomly selected from the Florida Cancer Data System database. In 2010, the most recent year for which data are available, that database represented about 38,000 black men in Florida.

Investigators will contact each man via telephone or postcard in an effort to identify which group he may fall into, whether native-born African-American, African immigrant or Caribbean immigrant. Sixty of these men will be asked to participate in in-depth interviews, some of which will use a method called “photo voice.” In this method, each participant is given a disposable camera and asked to take photos over the course of a week of people, places and objects that define his prostate cancer experience. At the end of the week, the photos are printed and each man is asked to tell the stories behind the photos and their impact on his prostate cancer experience.

As part of the prostate cancer care and survivorship model for black men, the study also will produce a video documentary of 30 of the men and their caregivers talking about the full range of their prostate cancer experiences. The team also will explore the process of how men move from being prostate cancer patients to becoming prostate cancer advocates in their communities. Workshops throughout the state will take place during the final phase of the effort, to report findings back to African-American, African and Caribbean communities and to cultivate prostate cancer advocates in those communities.

“I think the whole thing we have to look at, in reality, is that for many people, the word cancer conjures up such fear that the fear often times overrides the individual’s need to get the facts that will enable them to fight the disease,” said Virgil H. Simons, a prostate cancer survivor and founder of The Prostate Net, an international, not-for-profit prostate cancer patient advocacy organization. “This study is important because it will help people understand some of those things can be controlled and dealt with on an individual basis, and identify those things that can be addressed on a community basis.

View Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=469jyyNXqcw

UF pharmacy researchers hope to reduce the risk for heart disease and stroke for at-risk patients within a community pharmacy setting. With personal assistance from the pharmacy’s Community Health Worker, patients can better understand and manage multiple medications to improve their health outcomes and quality of life.

For information about this service, contact Hillsboro Specialty Pharmacy, 4505 E. Hillsborough Ave. Tampa, Fl. 33610, (813) 682-8400

The association selected Carole Kimberlin, Ph.D., FAPhA, in recognition of her paper titled “Patient counseling practices in U.S. pharmacies: Effects of having pharmacists hand the medication to the patient and state regulations on pharmacist counseling.” The award was presented March 3 at the APhA annual meeting in Los Angeles.

The paper, published in the July 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association, was co-authored by UF researchers Allison Newland Jamison, Pharm.D.; Stephan Linden, a 2013 doctoral candidate; and Almut G. Winterstein, Ph.D., a professor of pharmaceutical outcomes and policy.

The Wiederholt Prize recognizes the best paper published in the Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association within the past two calendar years, describing original investigation in the areas of economic, social or administrative sciences. The award, presented at the opening session of the association’s national meeting in Los Angeles, includes an engraved plaque, marble bookends, and registration and travel stipend to the meeting.

The honor was doubly appreciated by Kimberlin. First, in receiving recognition in an area central to her research and teaching interests ― trusted relationships with patients ― and secondly, for her own memories of Joseph B. Wiederholt, Ph.D., (1949-2001) the prize’s namesake.

Wiederholt, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was the first recipient of the best paper award, which was renamed the Wiederholt Prize in 2002 in his memory.

“Professor Wiederholt mentored faculty who are now leaders in social and administrative pharmacy,” Kimberlin said. “He was also a friend and colleague, which brings even greater meaning to receiving this award.”

Hendrik Luesch, Ph.D.

Known as symplostatin 5, the compound was extracted from blue-green algae collected in Cetti Bay, Guam, by Hendrik Luesch, Ph.D., the Frank A. Duckworth eminent scholar chair in drug research and development. The new compound targets an enzyme overactive in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, acute respiratory distress syndrome, cystic fibrosis and other diseases.

“These compounds can potentially offer a new opportunity to treat COPD and related diseases in a different way and possibly more effectively,” Luesch said.

COPD is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, killing more than 120,000 Americans each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Current therapies alleviate symptoms of COPD, but do not slow disease progression. Only one drug, Sivelestat, targets the enzyme, called elastase, but its marginal effects are delaying further clinical approvals, Luesch said.

Elastase is an enzyme that breaks down a variety of proteins. In COPD, where there is excessive enzyme activity, this contributes in part to lung damage and inflammation. The effects of elastase on these processes contribute to the irreversible destruction of lung tissues typically observed in COPD patients.

Lilibeth Salvador

Lilibeth Salvador, a researcher in Luesch’s Marine Natural Products lab, led the investigation published Feb. 14 in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. The study revealed that the blue-green algae prevented elastase-driven changes in bronchial connective tissue cells. She is also presenting the findings at the college’s 26th Annual Research Showcase on Thursday.

Salvador, who will earn her doctorate from the UF College of Pharmacy in May, uses a soccer analogy to describe how the compound may prove to be a more effective drug therapy.

“By inhibiting this enzyme, we prevent one of the key players in the initiation of COPD. So, we prevent the ball from being relayed on to other players involved in the progression of the disease,” she said.

Blue-green algae investigated by the Luesch lab contain naturally occurring molecules essential for survival in a harsh marine environment. These ingredients are what Luesch believes will lead to a new source of drugs that he hopes to develop for improved treatments for patients suffering from COPD and a host of other diseases.

From his marine samples collected in the Atlantic side of the Florida Keys to as far away as Guam in the Pacific, Luesch has discovered dozens of new promising compounds. His lab has already chemically synthesized several of these natural products and designed and generated similar compounds with improved drug-like properties. Further research funding enables him to continue the drug development process. His early studies show these marine compounds have the right stuff to begin further clinical studies for drugs to treat colorectal, prostate and metastatic breast cancer, enhance bone regeneration and slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

Go to UF & Shands Newsroom article

This year’s keynote speaker is Betty B. Yao, Ph.D., associate director, Abbott Laboratories. Dr. Yao is the leader of a new target discovery team with extensive experience in target validation and has advanced novel targets for the initiation of lead generation and lead optimization. Her presentation “Seeding in Rich Soil: Early Target Validation Increases the Clinical Probability of Success” will be in the afternoon on the Thursday, February 28.

General Oral Competition

Entry Deadline: No later than 9 a.m., Tuesday, January 22, 2013

To enter, complete the Oral Competition Form and submit it to Debbie Bambarola by the deadline, along with your abstract not to exceed 1,000 words or 2 pages including figures, graphs, tables, etc. Submitted abstracts exceeding this limitation will be returned without consideration. For those abstracts that require color, please email it to Debbie at debbie@cop.ufl.edu.

There are two divisions for the general oral competition. Those graduate students within one year of receiving their Ph.D. degree are in the Senior Division and should present work that is reflective of advanced graduate research.  All other graduate students will be placed in the Junior Division and may present work of a more preliminary nature.  There will be three (3) finalists selected for each division. First prize in each division will be $600. The other two finalists in each division will receive $300. All finalists will receive a commemorative plaque. All of the oral competitions will take place from 1:00 p.m. and end by 4:00 p.m. in the HPNP Building.

Levitt Competition

This year’s competition will again feature the Dr. Robert A. and Phyllis Levitt Research Award (Levitt Award). The focus of the Levitt competition will be on applied pharmacy research. Graduate students (senior or junior division) who have performed meritorious research in the areas of health outcomes research or related translational research in the clinical sciences are eligible to apply for this competition.

Finalists selected for the Levitt competition are not eligible for the general oral competition. Two finalists will be selected to compete in the Levitt competition. First prize will be $600 and the other finalist will receive $300. Both Levitt finalists will receive a commemorative plaque.

Poster Competition

Entry Deadline: Friday, February 8, 2013

Graduate students and post-doctoral fellows who are currently doing research within the University of Florida are eligible to present posters in their respective divisions. Pharmacy students involved in research with a faculty member in the College of Pharmacy are also eligible and are encouraged to present their work.

Complete the Poster Competition Form and submit it to Debbie Bambarola by the deadline. The poster category will be held in the morning with posters displayed in the Reception Hall of the HPNP Building (under the Auditorium) beginning at 8:00am. At 9:00 am judging will begin and end by 11:30 am. Poster frames are 4’ x 6’, so please plan your poster accordingly. A $300 award will be given to the winner in each of the Graduate Student, Post-doctoral Fellow and Pharmacy Student categories along with a commemorative plaque.

Note: Finalists in the Oral Competition will not be eligible for an award in the Poster Competition although they may still prepare a poster.

Reception

A reception will be held after the events of the day in the Reception Hall starting about 5:00 pm. During the reception, we will announce winners from each category. This is also a time to meet other faculty members and students within the college and perhaps discover other research interests going on in the college.

We urge all those who are eligible to participate in this competition to submit their form, and hope everyone will attend the day’s activities to support their fellow colleagues.

Please contact Debbie Bambarola in the Office of Research and Graduate Studies (273-6301) if you have any questions.