Faculty Highlights
AMGEN funding for PGY2 Critical Care Pharmacy Residency Program under Tesoro
Research
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Bishop and Cavallari Receives FY2008 Valteich Award
Jeffrey Bishop, PharmD and Larisa Cavallari, PharmD, tenure-track assistant professors at the Department of Pharmacy Practice, received the 2007-2008 Hans Vahlteich Research Award. This award is generously endowed by the Vahlteich and Delaney families to support the research activities in the
Dr. Bishop’s goal in his research project entitled “Pharmacogenetics of Working Memory Response to Risperidone” is to investigate the relationship of variants in a g-protein signaling gene with response to the antipsychotic risperidone in treatment-naïve patients with schizophrenia. This study will involve the assessment of DNA samples for selected variants in this gene to determine the relationships between these polymorphisms and neurophysiological assessments of working memory and symptom response. This research will be conducted with Dr. John Sweeney, professor and director of Center for Cognitive Medicine Department of Psychiatry, and collaborators from the UIC Department of Psychiatry's Center for Cognitive Medicine.
Dr. Cavallari in her research project entitled “Genetic Determinants of Warfarin Dose Requirements in African Americans” will investigate whether the VKORC1 gene is associated with warfarin dose requirements in African Americans. Warfarin is an anticoagulant that is commonly prescribed for the treatment and prevention of thromboembolic disorders and VKORC1 is the gene for vitamin K epoxide reductase (VKOR). Validation that genotype influences warfarin response in various racial groups could ultimately lead to pharmacogenomic-guided warfarin dosing. This approach to dosing has the potential to reduce the time to achieve optimal anticoagulation and the risks for bleeding and thrombosis as a result of under- and over-anticoagulation, respectively.
Both faculty members were also selected recipients of the 2006 Frontiers Research Awards of the