The University of Arizona
Department of Pharmacology

Faculty Bios and Contact

Affiliate Faculty

Peter B. Chase, M.D., Ph.D., Clinical Emergency Medicine.

Jack H. Dean, Ph.D., Sc.D., DABT, Fellow ATS, Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of Pharmacy. Research interests include the safety assessment of new pharmaceutical entities, acceleration of the drug development process, immunotoxicology, and models for understanding toxicity at a molecular level.

Ronald P. Hammer, Jr., Ph.D., Professor, Departments of Basic Medical Sciences and Pharmacology - The University of Arizona College of Medicine—Phoenix in partnership with Arizona State University, Professor, Department of Psychology - Arizona State University.

Israel Hanin, Research Lecturer, Professor and Chair Emeritus, Ph.D., Loyola University, Chicago. Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

Victor Hruby, Regents Professor, Ph.D., Department of Chemistry. The chemistry of human behavior especially peptide hormones and neurotransmitters; drug design, discovery and development; pain, addiction, feeding behavior, sexual behavior, pigmentation disease, cancer, diabetes, immune response; GPCRs; biophysics/biochemistry of health and disease.

David G. Johnson, M.D., Professor, Department of Medicine. Endocrine pharmacology; pharmacology and physiology of pancreatic function; peptide hormones; clinical pharmacology.

Bruce Kaplan, M.D., Professor, Departments of Medicine, Surgery and Pharmacology.

Douglas F. Larson, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Surgery
Immunopharmacology: pharmacology and design of selective immunosuppressive therapies for solid organ transplantation and auto-immune diseases.

Ronald Lukas, Ph.D., Professor, Barrow Neurological Institute
Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor biology using clonal lines and transgene expression systems; neurotrophic factors; neurodegenerative diseases; neuronal differentiation.

T. Philip Malan, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., Professor, Department of Anesthesiology
Neuropharmacology; pharmacology and molecular biology of neuropathic pain.

Robin Polt, Ph.D., Professor of Chemistry. Synthesis and new synthetic methods, drug design and transport. Neuropsychopharmacology and the blood-brain barrier.

William Roeske, M.D., Professor, Department of Medicine
Cardiovascular pharmacology; regulation, characterization, and identification of autonomic receptors; neuropharmacology of drugs of abuse.

F. Mazda Shirazi, M.D., Ph.D., Clinical Emergency Medicine.

Daniel Stamer, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Opthalmology and Pharmacology
Molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie the regulation of aqueous humor outflow in the human eye; including receptor activation, second messenger signaling, ion and water transport, and secretory function.

Research Track

Juan Miguel Jimenez Andrade, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor, chronic skeletal pain.

Tamara King, Ph.D., Research Associate Professor
Pharmacology; neurochemical signaling of noxious and innocuous sensory inputs to the spinal cord; mechanisms of chronic morphine induced abnormal pain.

Ronald Lukas, Ph.D., Research Professor

Michael H. Ossipov, Ph.D., Research Professor
Pharmacology; neurophysiology, pharmacology and neuroanatomical pathways of acute and chronic pain states; isobolographic and statistical interpretation of drug-drug interactions.

Sangita Pawar, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor

Isis Sroka, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor

Eva Varga, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor
Molecular pharmacology of drugs of abuse; cellular mechanisms of drug tolerance; design and characterization of non-addictive analgesics, cardioprotective agents, and immunomodulators.

George Watts, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor
Investigation of esophageal adenocarcinoma, a cancer with a poor prognosis that arises from a common change in the tissue lining the esophagus referred to as Barrett's esophagus. Dr. Watts has analyzed the changes in gene expression that are associated with progression from Barrett's esophagus to cancer. The genes identified during microarray-based studies are being developed as biomarkers and targets for improving therapy.

Colin Willis, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor
Mechanisms of Glial/endothelial cell/extracellular matrix interactions at the blood-brain barrier and effect on vascular permeability in acute and chronic disease states.

 

Faculty Research Areas