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Research, together with teaching and service, is a major activity of the College of Pharmacy at The Ohio State University. Faculty, graduate students, and some undergraduate, professional students, and staff are extensively involved in the exciting process of discovery and dissemination of knowledge. Pharmaceutical sciences extends well beyond the medication dispensing function of pharmacy to include all aspects of the discovery, development, and use of medicines. Our research activities cover an extensive array of areas within the umbrella of the pharmaceutical sciences.

Within the broad scope of the pharmaceutical sciences, the College of Pharmacy has four major focus areas, around which our divisional organizational structure and Ph.D. specialty programs are organized. The medicinal chemistry and pharmacognosy discipline involves the discovery and development of new drugs. The pharmaceutics area focuses on drug effects on cells and tissues, analysis of changes in drug effects over time, and on drug delivery and targeting systems. The pharmacology area concentrates on determination of biochemical and physiological mechanisms by which drugs exert their biological effects. The pharmacy practice and administration discipline focus is defining optimal dosage regimens of drugs, people's attitudes and behaviors relative to use of medicines, and economic issues related to use of drugs.

Our research activities can be described in terms of therapeutic benefit to be derived from the research work. Major activities relate to drugs used to treat cancer, drugs that affect the brain, drugs used to treat heart and vascular diseases, optimizing use of medicines, and drug delivery and targeting to specific organs or cell types in the body.

Activities related to cancer include: studies on the biochemical abnormalities that cause a cell to be cancerous; developing specific regimens that optimize therapy for bladder, head, and neck cancers; developing new drugs relating to steroid hormones and retinoids; discovering natural products effective in treating cancers; minimizing adverse gastrointestinal effects of currently used drugs; and targeting anticancer drugs to specific organs and selectively to cancerous cells. Our faculty who are involved in this research effort are also participants in the Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Neuropharmacology research areas include drug abuse and addictions, neurodegenerative diseases, neuronal regulation of organs, and control of pain.

Cardiovascular pharmacology activities focus on oxidative mechanisms in cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and electrical rhythms in the heart. This program involves interdisciplinary activities with the Heart and Lung Institute, College of Medicine, College of Veterinary Sciences, and Cleveland Clinic.

Relative to optimizing the use of medicines, activities include procedures to minimize adverse effects from the use of medicines, evaluation of economic aspects of the use of medicines, and development of pediatric dosing regimens.

One of the developments of the last few years is the discovery that large molecules such as proteins and oligonucleotides (including genes) can be effective therapeutic agents. A major difficulty in using these is lack of effectiveness when taken orally. We have activities focusing on use of special carriers to allow oral use of such medicines. Other work seeks to develop more effective delivery of drugs to specific areas of the body through use of a variety of biochemical carrier mechanimsms.

Approximately 40 faculty are actively involved in research. Of these, one has the honor of being a Distinguished University Professor, two have received distinguished teaching awards, fourteen are fellows of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, four are fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and five have received national research awards. For calendar year 2001, faculty in our college were authors on 120 refereed publications and were supported by $7,765,041 in external funding. Approximately 100 pharmacy graduate students and 15 graduate students from interdisciplinary programs are also involved in research activities. Interdisciplinary program involvement includes Ohio State Biochemistry Program, Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology, and Neuroscience.