This proposal requests continuing support for formal graduate study and research training in the pharmacological sciences with particular emphasis on cellular and molecular approaches. The program is organized to coordinate primarily with an established interdisciplinary graduate program in Biomedical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego, and is designed to provide specific training through courses and research experiences in the pharmacological sciences. The core faculty includes 17 members of the Department of Pharmacology plus 24 other faculty with research interests in cellular and molecular aspects of the discipline. The latter faculty members hold Adjunct appointments in Pharmacology or primary appointments in other UCSD departments. The entire training faculty encompasses members of the Departments of Pharmacology, Medicine, Neuroscience, Psychiatry and Chemistry-Biochemistry and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UCSD. In addition, a limited number jointly appointed members of the Salk Institute, the Scripps Research Institute and the Burnham Institute participate. The vast majority of students supported by the training grant come from the Biomedical Sciences Program. It is expected that trainees will gain a background in cellular and molecular biology, physiology and pharmacology in a series of four core courses. An elective program emphasizing a unique perspective into pharmacology is designed for the trainees to develop specific expertise in cellular and molecular approaches to drug action and specificity, signal transduction, disposition of pharmacologic agents, the structures of receptors or other targets of drug action, pharmacogenomics and the effects of chemical intervention and physiologic regulation of gene expression. An expanding faculty and new interdisciplinary perspectives have provided substantial changes in training over the last decade and it is expected that this trend will continue. Recent initiatives have expanded training in computational areas by virtue of faculty recruitments at a senior level, appointments of faculty at the San Diego Supercomputer Center and installation of new courses in data base analysis and computation of structure. The training program has benefited from new NIH Centers in environmental health sciences and pharmacogenomics which emphasize genetic and recombinant DNA techniques and allow for core resource and collaborative developments.
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