The Pharmacist / Spring 2022 / Volume 44 / Issue 2

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Sources of Inspiration and Motivation Blending purpose and passion with scientific acumen, UIC Pharmacy researchers thrive in drug discovery and adjacent areas. B Y D A N I E L P . S M I T H Torsten Wiesel didn’t win the Nobel Prize by accident. A self-described “lazy, mischievous student” in his early years, Wiesel grew fascinated by the workings of the nervous system as a university student in the 1940s. That enthrallment, coupled with an inherent interest in psychiatry cultivated at the dinner table—Wiesel’s father directed a mental institution near the family’s Stockholm home—fueled his prolific career as a neurophysiologist, including a longstanding collaboration with David Hubel on sensory processing that netted the pair their Nobel honor in 1981. Absent that deep and pressing wonder about the nervous system and the mind, Wiesel once said, such groundbreaking work would have been tough to achieve no matter his IQ score. “Science is not an intelligence test,” Wiesel charged. “Intuition is important, knowing what kind of questions to ask. The other thing is a passion for getting to the core of the problem.” As Wiesel’s words suggest, enterprising, purpose-filled work fuels some of the scientific world’s most enterprising initiatives, and this reality rings especially true at the UIC College of Pharmacy. On UIC Pharmacy’s Chicago and Rockford campuses, researchers pairing deep scientific knowledge with an earnest mix of purpose and passion continue leading ambitious drug discovery research efforts in fields such as cancer, infectious diseases, and women’s health—three particular areas, it’s worth noting, that will be bolstered with the forthcoming debut of the Drug Discovery and Cancer Research Pavilion at UIC. Whether motivated by their personal connections to a disease, deeply held philosophical underpinnings, or an intense, unrelenting curiosity, College of Pharmacy researchers’ ability to blend undeniable acumen with a sincere desire to advance drug discovery and adjacent areas, such as drug delivery, diagnostics, and even adherence, continues sparking profound results with the power to enhance patient care and improve healthcare. “This elevates their work and takes it to a different level,” UIC College of Pharmacy dean Glen Schumock says of UIC researchers’ mission-driven work. “We have rich examples across the college of our researchers’ inquiry impacting patient health in positive ways, and that’s work we want to continue doing for the benefit of our local communities and our world.” Dr. Jeremy Johnson 12 THE PHARMACIST PHARMACY.UIC.EDU
A SPIRITED QUEST TO DISCOVER THE CANCER-FIGHTING POWER OF NATURAL PRODUCTS For much of the last 15 years, Dr. Jeremy Johnson, has been exploring the mangosteen fruit’s potential to address prostate cancer, a disease recording 1.3 million new cases each year, according to the World Cancer Research Fund. In preclinical studies, Johnson’s lab has isolated nine different compounds from the mangosteen, a popular fruit from Southeast Asia that Johnson first discovered as a young research fellow thumbing through a catalog of novel compounds. Each of the nine mangosteen compounds holds its own unique targets. Johnson hopes his research inspires novel approaches to target the androgen receptor known to play a pivotal role in prostate cancer’s development and progression. “I’m encouraged by the opportunity to move this research to clinical trials and impact lives,” says Johnson, whose work on the mangosteen earned him a MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health in 2019. For Johnson, who proclaimed his intentions to become a scientist as a six-year-old, the promise of researching natural products and drug targets continues to excite. “Discovery is so appealing to me, even more when you consider its potential effect on real lives,” says Johnson, who is also investigating rosemary’s therapeutic potential in breast and prostate cancer cases. A FOUNDATIONAL MOMENT, BIG DATA, AND BATTLING CANCER As a 10-year-old boy, Greg Calip, PharmD ’08, PhD, MPH, watched his young cousins confront the death of their father from colorectal cancer. It was a foundational moment for Calip. “I knew even then that if I was somehow capable of helping cancer patients, I would,” Calip says. Though Calip assumed his cancer-fighting efforts would occur in clinical settings, the UIC-trained PharmD discovered an aptitude for big data while pursuing his PhD in epidemiology at the University of Washington. Today, big data is the weapon Calip wields against cancer. Last March in JAMA Oncology, Calip and his team reported findings that the 21-gene recurrence score, a tool frequently used to identify breast cancer candidates for adjuvant chemotherapy, was less predictive for racial and ethnic minority patients. As a result, black women in the United States were more likely to die of axillary node-negative breast cancer than their white peers carrying comparable recurrence scores. Those findings crystallize the need for model calibration and more inclusive research designed to narrow existing health disparities and improve outcomes for all cancer patients. “Real-world patient data has a role in pushing drug discovery forward and improving treatment options for cancer patients,” says Calip, an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacy Systems, Outcomes, and Policy. BRINGING PATIENT CONTEXT TO DRUG DISCOVERY A clinical psychologist who specializes in health, Dr. Lisa Sharp is committed to making sure existing as well as new therapeutics consider patient-side context. “You can come up with all the wonderful drugs in the world, but if patients are not able to follow through and take the medications as necessary, then it’s futile,” says Sharp, whose perspective has been shaped by a childhood in Oklahoma in which she saw many around her struggle to manage their health. Since arriving at UIC in 2012, Sharp, an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacy Systems, Outcomes, and Policy, has devoted much of her research to understanding the healthcare barriers UI Health patients face and designing relevant interventions to cultivate improved outcomes. Over the last decade, for instance, Sharp has steered a UI Health program focused on vulnerable patients struggling to control their type 2 diabetes. The program includes sending race, ethnicity, and language-concordant health coaches directly into patients’ homes to facilitate care and directly address patient struggles. “We don’t do a great job in the healthcare system of considering the challenges of people taking medications,” Sharp says. “But if we can bring patient context into drug discovery, then we’re in a much better position to drive improved patient outcomes.” Dr. Lisa Sharp SPRING 2022 THE PHARMACIST 13
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The Pharmacist / Spring 2022 / Volume 44 / Issue 2

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