North Texas Pharmacy Researchers Awarded CPRIT Funding

• By Mark Hendricks
• September 15, 2016

The Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) announced Sept. 14 it was awarding a $2.5 million grant to Richard Leff, Pharm.D., and the North Texas Clinical Pharmacology Cancer Core, a group of researchers from the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) School of Pharmacy campus in Dallas.

Leff, a professor for TTUHSC’s Department of Pharmacy Practice and senior associate dean for the School of Pharmacy’s clinical and translational research, said there is urgent need for translating basic cancer research discoveries into improved care for cancer patients and better interventional tools to cure and prevent cancer. To assist basic cancer researchers and physicians in developing better methods for testing new cancer drugs and cancer treatment therapies that result from these efforts, Leff and a team of TTUHSC School of Pharmacy collaborators have established the North Texas Clinical Pharmacology Cancer Core, a state-of-the-art analytical facility operating in the Dallas Medical District.

“Our team has expertise and state-of-the-art instrumentation to help cancer investigators with designing studies to optimize our understanding of drug movement in the body, the action of drugs and the best approaches to administer the drug and enhance cures while reducing unwanted side effects,” Leff said.

Such testing, Leff added, will assist investigators to better understand how cancer drugs work in the body, how the drugs treat cancer and how to avoid unwanted effects of cancer drugs.

“In general, the research team of this core will support translational researchers to do research on what cancer drugs do to the body and what the human body does to the drugs,” Leff said. “Continued funding will keep the Clinical Pharmacology Cancer Core open and operational, upgrade our laboratory and expand our research capacity and capability to meet clinical pharmacology needs of North Texas cancer investigators.”

The Clinical Pharmacology Cancer Core includes Claudia Meek, Ph.D., Carlos Alvarez, Pharm.D., and Ronald Hall, Pharm.D., from the TTUHSC School of Pharmacy campus in Dallas; and Paul Trippier, Ph.D., from the TTUHSC campus in Amarillo.