April 4, 1996 Contact: Robert Irion (408) 459-2495; irion@ua.ucsc.edu
UC SANTA CRUZ DEBUTS NEW UNDERGRADUATE FOCUS IN PHARMACOLOGY AND TOXICOLOGY
Program attracts the support of industry, including a $25,000 challenge grant from Glaxo Wellcome
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SANTA CRUZ, CA--Finding and testing safe and effective new drugs, pesticides, and other useful chemicals is a tricky business. Designing them from scratch is even harder. In the face of ongoing battles against deadly viruses, cancer, agricultural pests, and a legion of threats to our environment, the demand has never been greater for skilled scientists who can evaluate new compounds and help bring them to market.
That's why the University of California, Santa Cruz, has created a program in pharmacology and toxicology for undergraduate students. A formal sequence of lectures for juniors and seniors, the program will give students the tools they need to compete successfully for jobs in the burgeoning pharmaceutical and toxicological industries.
The program is a "pathway," or concentration, within a rigorous undergraduate major in biochemistry and molecular biology. Ultimately, planners hope to add a concurrent series of laboratory classes and to make the pathway (known as "PTox") a full-fledged major leading to a bachelor's degree.
"Our students have been really motivated and excited by this subject matter, because it's so applicable to their everyday lives," says program codirector Ronald Tjeerdema, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry. "This isn't just theoretical chemistry, this is real stuff--drugs and their effects on our bodies, chemicals and their effects on the environment. It's material the students can take away and use every day."
Tjeerdema and codirector Dr. Morris Barenfus, the campus veterinarian, have consulted with leaders in pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries on the program's development. Members of an advisory board include Bradford Baer of BioDirections, Menlo Park; Gary Novack of Pharma Logic, Irvine; Gordon Ringold of Affymax Research Institute, Palo Alto; and John Stephenson of Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Santa Cruz.
The program has received donations or commitments of funding from several corporations. The most recent gift was a $25,000 challenge grant from Glaxo Wellcome, a British company with a U.S. division based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Glaxo Wellcome will donate an additional $25,000 to the program if UCSC can raise that amount from other sources. The gift is Glaxo Wellcome's first public donation in California.
"There is a tremendous shortage of students who receive hands-on training in the classical laboratory techniques of pharmacology and toxicology," says UCSC alumnus Gordon Ringold, the CEO of Affymax, a wholly owned subsidiary of Glaxo Wellcome. "Graduates of this new program will bring valuable experience to the broad biotechnology and pharmaceutical community in the Bay Area."
Other notable support for the program has come from the following industries: Genentech of South San Francisco, several gifts totaling $57,000; Syntex of Palo Alto, a $5,000 donation; and Applied Immune Sciences of Santa Clara, which has donated the time of researchers as guest lecturers at UCSC.
The PTox lecture sequence began in spring 1995 and has continued through this academic year. Future plans call for the addition of lab classes and summer internships at industries in the region for students between their junior and senior years.
The courses focus on how certain chemicals react with biological systems and with the environment. Students learn about the structures of drugs and the details of how they interact with receptor molecules in the body. Future lab classes and internships will focus on the many steps involved in taking a drug or other bioactive chemical from discovery to public use. Students will gain a working knowledge of all the basic benchtop tools they would encounter in industry. Instructors will convey the broader issues that govern how workers use those tools, such as legal and ethical concerns and the standards of "good laboratory practice."
Other undergraduate programs exist in the separate fields of pharmacology and toxicology. For instance, there is a pharmacology major at UC Santa Barbara and a toxicology major at UC Davis. As far as organizers are aware, however, the PTox program at UCSC would become the only undergraduate major to combine both fields.
Editor's note: You may reach the program codirectors as follows:
Dr. Morris Barenfus: (408) 459-4706 or barenfus@biology.ucsc.edu Ronald Tjeerdema: (408) 459-2917 or tjeerdem@hydrogen.ucsc.edu
This release is also available on the World Wide Web at UCSC's "Services for Journalists" site (http://www.ucsc.edu/news/journalist.html).
Press Releases Home | Search Press Releases | Press Release Archive | Services for Journalists
Maintained by:pioweb@cats.ucsc.edu