"Pfizer grant boosts funds for research, faculty"

Citing an industry-wide need for advanced drug research and qualified pharmacy graduates, Pfizer Inc. will be providing the UB School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences with a five-year grant of up to $7.5 million.

The grant -- $1.5 million per year for three years with a possible two-year extension -- will be used to fund research and development in the areas of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics by hiring new faculty, buying new equipment and allotting more slots for students to attend the school.

"The money's being used to grow the program," said Wayne Anderson, dean of the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. "The issue is that the kind of people that we train are in such short supply that Pfizer wants to increase these numbers."

"I think a key here is we need to create a larger faculty pool and more graduates that can go into the industry and go to other universities to teach more students in the field," he added.

More than 50 UB graduates currently work for Pfizer at various levels, all the way up to vice president.

"In terms of the strategic alliance, it provides a funding option. Also, it gives the school another corporate partner," said Leigh Yates, assistant dean and director of development for the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Yates said it's important for the school to have industry support, and that the partnership will get Pfizer and the entire pharmaceutical industry "excited about the school."

Anderson described a halo effect such an alliance will provide UB: Pfizer will now look here for graduates in several areas from business to arts and sciences because they recognize the school's quality.

"The strategic alliance will shine a light on UB in Pfizer's eyes," Anderson said.

A highly selective school that is tough to get into, UB's pharmacy program is the only one of its kind within SUNY, and it is often ranked among the best in the country. UB, which is planning a South Campus expansion for the school, is currently a "Tier 1" recruitment target for Pfizer.

"The science that is carried out at our school is at the cutting edge of pharmaceutical science research and Pfizer wants to expand that," Anderson said.

Pharmaceutics professor Dr. William Jusko is one of a handful of people worldwide that are doing this type of research in the fields of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics.

"It shows how a drug not only effects the target area, gets rid of a headache if it's a headache medicine, but also how it affects all the different parts of the body," Anderson said.

Pharmacodynamic models will allow researchers to predict how a drug will affect different people. Anderson explained that age, weight, gender and ethnicity can all change how a drug works in someone's body.

"It helps reduce the number of experimental animals that are needed," Anderson said. "It'll make the development of drugs more efficient. Discoveries will be able to come to market more quickly instead of it taking a decade."

Drug companies and the Food and Drug Administration are looking for these models to decrease the amount of research time creating a new drug takes, as well as making drugs both safer and cheaper.

"Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics are critical to the field right now. It's the amount of response based on the amount of drug in the tissue," said Robert Straubinger, a UB professor who is also on the steering committee that will meet at least once a year to discuss "projects of mutual interest."

"The FDA is asking for these pharmacodynamic models so that they can monitor dosages and effects as well as the times at which a drug peaks in its effectiveness so that they can better tell when to monitor a patient," Straubinger said.

Anderson described pharmacokinetics as the study of what a drug does to perturb the biological system. It is a sort of drug metabolism that shows how a drug is absorbed, distributed, and eliminated from the body and in how much time.

He also described pharmacodynamics as a "math modeling system" that combines pharmacokinetics and pharmacogenetics and "shows what toxic effects the drug may have on a myriad of different cell types."

Although some dissonant voices have said that Pfizer is going to control all UB's research, most consider Pfizer's range of goals so broad that UB will be allowed to conduct, publish and research that they want.

"People think that we're in bed with 'Big Pharm,' " Anderson said, "but there are no restrictions on what we can do. It's simply free, unencumbered research. It coincides nicely with UB2020 because it fits very well with the strategic strengths of molecular recognition and nanomedicine."

According to Straubinger, this research will continue to be critical to the advancement of the pharmaceutical industry.

"It's been difficult up to this point to tune the drugs because of the lack of understanding of the pharmacodynamics of these systems. The point is a therapy that is optimal to achieve the desired beneficial effects."