Research Teams
The USC School of Pharmacy works collaboratively across the university and around the world to seek the next big breakthroughs in health care. The School focuses on cutting-edge research in the design, discovery, targeting and delivery of novel therapies that improve human health—particularly in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, cardiovascular ailments, diabetes and immune system disorders. The wide range of expertise among our faculty, including biotechnology, chemical biology, and health economics and policy, allows for a rich collaborative environment that facilitates innovation.
The only private school of pharmacy on a major health sciences campus, the School benefits from a strong interdisciplinary environment that fosters new insights into challenging scientific, regulatory and health economics issues. Consistently the top-ranked school of pharmacy in the nation, the School also is second in National Institutes of Health funding for pharmacy schools.
Our team approach provides a flexible research model that allows us to seamlessly align strengths as needed, while building upon laboratory successes—speeding the translation from breakthrough scientific discovery to direct improvement in patient care as well as innovative new practice models. In this section, you’ll learn more about our three primary teams, the faculty in each and the research currently underway at the School.
Research highlights
A continuous recipient of NIH funding since 1994, Dr. Hamm-Alvarez is developing an inexpensive and easy-to-use new diagnostic tool that could dramatically reduce the current average of seven years to diagnose Sjogren’s syndrome.
Does caloric restriction extend life span?
Some very healthy people, who also happen to be thin, believe that eating fewer calories may be a kind of fountain of youth – an anti-aging strategy. Professor Raj Sohal takes a look at this phenomenon.
A grant from Quintiles is helping the School build upon its leadership role in both health economic policy and regulatory science to promote more effective and efficient health care delivery and to make medical products faster, safer and better.
How do we meet the rising demand for psychiatric services among the homeless population?
With well over 50,000 people living on the streets in Los Angeles County, a collaboration between psychiatric pharmacists and primary care physicians at a skid-row, safety-net clinic provides a model of care that helps bridge the gap in providing comprehensive heath care that includes quality psychiatric services.
The USC School of Pharmacy is a key partner in the Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI), funded with a $56.8 million NIH award and aimed at speeding research from the laboratory into sustainable public health solutions.
Recipient of one of the first NIH “big idea” awards designed to “encourage projects so original that they have the potential to challenge fundamental beliefs,” Dr. Camarero was recognized for his research to develop a new generation of antibody substitutes.
