About
In the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, we explore fundamental biological mechanisms and molecules of therapeutic relevance for better health, empowered by novel technologies at the interface of chemistry, physics, and computational sciences.
Our research seeks to understand the biological principles of small molecules, proteins, and cellular design, and to apply these principles for the therapeutic benefit of patients. To this end we investigate new molecular treatment targets, new and more precise ways to therapeutically alter their activity, and new biomarkers to track disease and treatment efficacy.
We also create and continually refine both the chemical biology tools and the core enabling technologies used by our own labs and others worldwide to probe and analyze structural and systems biology at the molecular level.
We educate science students in many PhD programs at UC San Francisco. We are closely involved with the five PhD programs administered by the School of Pharmacy:
We provide our Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) professional student pharmacists with the strong basic science foundation required to deliver optimal patient care.
Accomplished postdoctoral scholars are welcomed into our labs where they receive the advanced research experience they need to become leaders in their fields.
We are committed to sharing advances in our fields of study with all the students we teach.
Our vision? A time when powerful technologies that fuel breakthroughs in mechanistic biology accelerate success in drug discovery and the diagnostic sciences and reveal the complex biological signaling processes that underpin human health and go awry in disease.