Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis (PBA)

Pharmaceutical and biomedical analysis encompasses interdisciplinary aspects of analysis in the pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences, including developments in analytical methodology, instrumentation, computation and interpretation. Applications of PBA focus on individual drugs, drug-stability studies, pharmacokinetics, therapeutic monitoring, metabolic profiling; drug-related aspects of analytical biochemistry and forensic toxicology; quality assurance and release testing as well as drug-related topics of health and safety in the pharmaceutical industry. The PBA program serves the needs of academic, clinical, government and industrial analysis, and provides a unique forum for translational developments at the interface between pharmaceutical, biochemical and clinical analysis.

Need:

Because chemical analysis crosses all the AGS groups, and analytical faculty and students spread across the AGS's, the PBA program was formed to provide to focus the analytical impact on the overall program. Graduate students need to know how to use the latest research equipment, but they also need to know how to differentiate between a good assay and an ideal one. Students need an awareness of the state of the art in instrumentation and in experimental results. PBA provides relevant seminars in the Pharmaceutical Sciences division to help students, and strengthens a discipline that would otherwise be under-reflected in the curriculum. The analytical literature is distinctly different and not covered well by other AGS groups. PBA is an academic home for students who might desire to pursue a doctoral degree with an emphasis in pharmaceutical or biomedical analysis.

The PBA program eliminates fragmentation in the Pharmaceutical Sciences program. Much of the most interesting PBA research is being done outside Pharmaceutical Sciences division, in Chemistry, Engineering, and Computational Sciences. The PBA program brings it back together and, more importantly, into Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Basis:

PBA is another opportunity for the University of Kentucky to be a leader in pharmaceutical sciences. At Rutgers, each graduate student selects a primary area of research in Pharmaceutical Analysis, Pharmaceutics, or Medicinal Chemistry. The University of Kansas has a research unit for Bioanalysis, along with ones for Molecular Pharmaceutics, Macromolecular Pharmaceutics, and Physical Pharmacy. Six professors, Stobaugh, Lunte, Kuwana, Larive, Dunn and Wilson, have research projects in the Bioanalysis area. The funding, prestige, and publications of the new PBA group at the University of Kentucky, make it already one of the strongest PBA programs in the nation, and helps to position Pharmaceutical Sciences at the top in this area in the U.S. The NIH is starting a new institute for biomedical imaging and bioengineering specifically to support research like the near-IR and fluorescence imaging research already conducted in our College of Pharmacy - research that is greatly enhanced in the PBA program.

PBA is very important in graduate training in pharmaceutical sciences, which is the reason the AGS groups were created. The PBA group has an impact on the Pharm.D. curriculum through education in therapeutic monitoring and metabolic profiling, including high-throughput screening and analysis with microtiter plate instruments with hundreds or even thousands of wells, computation, and interpretation in pharmaceutical care.

The NSF IGERT Biosensors training grant in the Chemistry Department has brought together an interdisciplinary group of well-funded faculty (analogous to the PBA group) with expertise in chemical analysis, and a number of Pharmaceutical Sciences graduate students are already funded through this training grant. The IGERT provides students an opportunity for internships in pharmaceutical and biotech companies while still enrolled at the university, which is very beneficial to the Pharmaceutical Sciences students, and the IGERT students can earn a certificate in Chemical Sensing Architectures, which adds to the value of their degree. Now, Pharmaceutical Sciences joint appointments in the AGS groups draw this group PBA faculty together into Pharmaceutical Sciences, where they can pursue further training grants and other efforts to improve the program.

Primary Faculty (to date):

Tom Burke

Sylvia Daunert

Robert Lodder

Jan St. Pyrek

Requested Secondary affiliation (to date):

Peter Crooks

Boyd Haley

Michael Jay

Michelle Marra

Courses:

PHR 510 Modern Methods in Pharmaceutical Analysis (5)

PHR 530 Radiopharmaceutics (3)

CHE 522 Instrumental Analysis (4)

CHE 526 Chemical Separations (2)

CHE 580 Bioanalytical Sensors (3)

CHE 580 Statistical Analysis (3)

CHE 620 Electrochemical Methods of Analysis (3)

CHE 625 Optical Methods of Analysis (3)

CHE 626 Advanced Analytical Chemistry (3)

CHE 643 Spectroscopy and Photophysics (3)

Also available electives in:

Mass Spectrometry

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

PBA is working up an introductory courses in Bioanalytical Instrumentation, the Theory of Chemical Analysis (3)(one semester), and an advanced course in Chemometrics (3)(one semester).

Return to the PBA Home Page