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| The Center for Integrative Education of Pharmacy Frontier was established in April, 2006, as a base unit for an integrative education of pharmaceutical sciences to create an advanced education / research system to meet the progress in drug discovery, clinical therapy and pharmacotherapy. The center consists of three departments; Department of PharmacoInformatics, Department of Clinical Pharmacy Education, and Department of Advanced Pharmaceutical Sciences and Biotechnology. There is one associate professor in each department, and each of those has close collaboration with other related departments. The Center aims to create an integrative education system and programs, and to contribute to social health and welfare by training pharmaceutical scientists who have an advanced ability with the integrative pharmacy education system. Details for education and research activities in each department are given below. | ||
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Department of PharmacoInformatics
The Department is responsible for undergraduate and graduate instruction and practice, especially in clinical pharmacy, and for establishment of the integrated education system of 4-year and 6-year education programs with a novel internet navigation system, consisting of some databases and e-learning system. In the system, a number of general and/or professional lectures and their related materials as well as the information provided by professional staffs are disclosed for the students and community medical personnel, in collaboration with staffs of the faculty. Tutorial education programs are also provided for undergraduate students, which is the program of problem-based learning with small group discussion.The research activities include personalized medicine via pretreatment profiling of genetic properties or therapeutic drug monitoring, and identification of biomarkers via transcriptome or proteome analysis.
Department of Integrative Clinical Pharmacy
The Department is responsible for instruction and practice of undergraduate students in the 6-year education programs, and also for curriculum planning. The educational contents used in the novel internet navigation system (see "Department of Pharmacoinformatics" ) were also provided from the department. The clinical researches are performed from viewpoint of optimization of pharmacotherapy.Conventionally used methodologies in clinical setting are subjected into the investigations.
Department of Advanced Pharmaceutical Sciences and Biotechnology
Despite the similarities between human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), which include clinical disorders associated with immunodeficiency syndromes, there is no evidence that FIV is zoonotic. Although FIV appears to be very highly species adapted even from the data on in vitro studies, evidence in support of FIV replication in human T-lymphoid cells was recently obtained by two independent groups. In addition, xenoinfection of nonhuman primates by FIV has more recently been reported. While further studies are required to demonstrate factors that influence cross-species infection of FIV to human cells, FIV may be a suitable candidate for use as a vector in human gene therapy owing to its ability to replicate in human cells. Our current research is elucidating the mechanism for the acquisition of human cell tropism by FIV and developing a tissue-specific FIV vector for use in human gene therapy. The Department will also be responsible for instruction in the training of both undergraduate and graduate students through research activities in virology, covering a broad spectrum from the basic to the applied. Reference: Tochikura et al. Fusion activity dissociated from replication ability in feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) in human cells. J. Acquir. Immune Defic. Syndr. 6, 130, 1993.