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UCSD School to Prepare Pharmacists for New Future

UCSD School to Prepare Pharmacists for New Future

Health Care: Training Will Prepare Students for Retail, Research Careers

BY MARION WEBB

Senior Staff Writer

Alain Rolland is a pharmacist. But he’s never worked at a retail pharmacy or put together medicines for hospital patients, nor would he want to.

Rolland, vice president of product development at Vical, a local gene therapy company, said he prefers being on the cutting-edge of drug research and development.

Biotech and pharmaceutical companies everywhere look to doctors of pharmacy, or Pharm.Ds, to figure out optimal strengths and ways to deliver drugs to patients for testing.

They also need pharmaceutical scientists, or Ph.D.s, to help chemists, biologists and other scientists do the nitty-gritty bench work of finding a mechanism to bring the substance into human body so that it’s effective and causes no toxic side effects.

Promising technologies in development, such as genetic tests to predict patients’ responses to drugs, and the perceived need by drug makers to come up with novel ways to formulate drugs have made highly-trained pharmacists an asset to drug makers, said Michael Adam, vice president of pharmaceutical sciences for Pfizer Global Research and Development, formerly Agouron Pharmaceuticals Inc. of La Jolla.

The problem is there aren’t enough pharmacists to go around in Southern California, Adam said.

Adam shares the hope of Palmer Taylor, chair of UCSD School of Medicine’s Department of Pharmacology and head of the planning committee for UCSD’s new School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, that some graduates will fill that void.

“There is a need for people who major in pharmaceutics and pharmaceutical sciences, because the drug industry is looking for more and newer technologies for delivering drugs,” Adam said.

UCSD’s school, which is the second public school of pharmacy behind UC San Francisco, addresses the critical shortage of the pharmacy workforce in the state, Taylor said.

In 1998, California had 51 pharmacists per 100,000 residents, which ranked it in 48th place among the 50 states in terms of number of pharmacists per population. The national average was 66 pharmacists per 100,000 residents, according to the Health Resources of Services Administration.

When UCSD’s students start classes on Sept. 26, they look at four years of comprehensive studies in such areas as pharmacogenomics, the use of genetic information to predict the toxicity, efficacy and safety of drugs, and good laboratory practices and drug manufacturing. Pharmacy students also share some coursework with the medical students, Taylor said. The idea is to give the future M.D.s and Ph.D.s or Pharm.Ds a better understanding of each other’s work for future collaboration.

Career Choices

Not all students will make a career in the drug industry. Some will chose retail pharmacy, work in hospital pharmacies, specialize in a particular disease or become consultants.

Ansam Asmar, one of the first 25 students entering UCSD’s pharmacy school, plans to do it all , research, consulting and practice pharmacy.

Asmar, who already has a PhD in psychology from Southern California University in Santa Ana, said the pharmacist training will give her the knowledge to develop new medications that mental health patients desperately seek.

Brandi Bain, 29, a licensed nurse who recently earned her undergraduate degree in biology from SDSU and had her first child, said she plans to contract with hospitals or nursing homes to educate their staff on things such as the correct dosage of drugs, drug interactions and proper storage of medicines.

“With all the new drugs coming out, you got to hope that pharmacists are really educated on it,” Bain said. She added, “You can’t expect doctors to be informed on all the new drugs.”

Dr. Jerold Chun, senior director of molecular neuroscience at Merck & Co. Inc., formerly Sibia Neurosciences Inc. in La Jolla, agreed.

“If you took the average physician on the street, they wouldn’t know how medicines came to be and wouldn’t know how they work,” Chun said. Chun said there is a “rebirth of pharmaceutical science” and he sees pharmacists as instrumental in the scientific effort to determine early on which patients will respond to a given drug and which won’t.

“All of this aims at getting the best medicines to people that make a difference to them,” Chun said.

Most of the experts agreed that technological advances in drug making have had an effect on the educational requirement of pharmacists.

“Pharmacy training has changed a lot,” said Rolland, who received his Pharm.D and Ph.D degrees from Rennes University in France. As recent as five to 10 years ago, students used to be prepared for retail pharmacy.

Today’s students have a much better understanding of the science behind drug making and development.

“The nicotine patch and gum were both developed by pharmaceutical scientists,” said Adam.

He said patients now demand drugs that are more convenient to take, such as medicines that are released over time for longer therapeutic effect or are combined with other drugs to enhance their effect or help reduce side effects.

That is precisely what giant drugmakers like Pfizer are eager to deliver, Adam said. Capturing the growing markets of the aging baby boomers and the elderly could give any drug company a competitive edge.

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