Academic Programs - Predoctoral Pharmacological Sciences | Cardiovascular Research Institute | UC Davis Health

NIH T32 GM144303 – Program Objectives:

The overarching goal of this predoctoral Pharmacological Sciences Training Program (PhTP) is to educate next generation of biomedical researchers in the concepts of drug discovery and development and to provide a clinical perspective.

Trainees come mainly from 4 graduate programs (Pharmacology and Toxicology, Physiology, Biomedical Engineering and Neuroscience) developing expertise in diverse areas. This reaches from classic pharmacology and drug target identification with cutting edge methods in biochemistry, structural biology, genomics molecular and cell biology, high resolution imaging, electrophysiology and behavioral physiology, to medicinal chemistry, engineering of microfluidic and other devices, animal models of disease, novel in vivo whole animal imaging and translational therapeutics in clinical trials.

The PhTP will provide focused and student-tailored small group training in the core principles of pharmacology for non-pharmacology trainees, and enmesh these students together with pharmacology students for more interdisciplinary group learning in the drug discovery and development.

A second goal is to enable all trainees to communicate and collaborate across the large array of research disciplines they represent. This goal is mainly realized in a highly innovative student-driven, project-oriented course Problem Solving in Pharmacological Sciences, which reinvents itself every year based on student initiative and interest.

The 51 training faculty are from 22 departments in 6 colleges, where extensive collaborative interactions already exist. Trainers provide in depth expertise that ranges from identifying novel therapeutic molecular targets and development of therapeutic molecules to clinical drug and stem cell trials at the NIH-funded UC Davis Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) and NIH-designated Cancer Center.

Novel drugs for treatment of cardiovascular, neurological, and immunological diseases and cancer, the four focus areas of our PhTP, have been developed and are being brought to clinic by several faculty at UC Davis.

Year-2

Year-1