Pharmacology

Accelerating BioVenture Innovation (ABI) (Phar 9009 01)
Weill Cornell Medicine BioVenture eLab Course
Email: enterpriseinnovation@med.cornell.edu

Course Objective

This intense 15-week program builds interdisciplinary teams comprised of trainees, clinicians and graduate students around patent pending institutional technologies. Teams learn through a combination of workshops, lectures, hands-on group assignments and 1:1 mentorship from industry experts to establish business plans for a Tri-I innovation.

Lectures, taught by experts in their respective fields, cover the fundamentals of developing and launching a company culminating in teams developing practice business plans and presenting them to venture capitalist judges at the end of the program.

Contact Loren Busby, Director of BioVenture eLab, at lob4002@med.cornell.edu for additional information.  

For more information, visit this webpage.

This course focuses on the underlying logic behind the design of scientific experiments. An emphasis is placed on understanding how hypotheses are generated and how variables, assays, rationales and model building are utilized in experimental design. Each class focuses on a recent paper in scientific literature and uses the paper as a starting point for discussion. Students are expected to propose and justify novel experiments based on the paper and discussion. Students are encouraged to use "Protocols in Molecular Biology," as well as other resources to become familiar with the methodology, advantages and limitations of the experimental approaches used in the papers. It is expected that students will have to read background papers for each of the papers discussed in class.

Weill Cornell Graduate School - Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute

This course has been designed in collaboration with drug development experts from Roche and provides a foundation of integrated knowledge of the multi-disciplined process of developing a new medication. It includes real world challenges encountered in the areas of discovery, development, manufacturing, global regulatory approval and commercialization of new medicines. In addition, the impact of emerging technologies to healthcare and the development process will be considered.
 
While each lecture could be a topic for one (or more) graduate course, the goal of this integrated program is to provide an introduction to the whole drug development process, to raise awareness of all the different aspects that need to be considered to bring new medicines to patients, and to elicit interest for young investigators. See here for syllabus.

Dr. Hitesh Chokshi (Course Leaders)

Dr. Gudas & Dr. Heller (Course Facilitators)

One Week Introduction to all Pharmacology Courses

This course is jointly sponsored by the Neuroscience and Pharmacology Programs. It is designed to present current concepts of the major central nervous system (CNS) neurotransmitters and their functional neuroanatomy. The course will integrate discussions of the mechanisms of neurotransmitter biosynthesis and release, receptor signal transduction and the alterations produced by CNS drugs.

The Neuropharmacology II course focuses on signaling by neuropeptides, opioid receptors, mechanisms of pain management and drugs of abuse.

This multidisciplinary course combines lectures about the fundamental biochemical, cellular, molecular, immunological, genetic, and bioinformatics approaches that are used in biomedical research with critical discussion of research papers. In addition to lectures, each meeting will have provisions for a discussion period. Generally, the discussion period will be used to discuss an original research paper, but occasionally it will be used for a model building laboratory, or a review session. The development of a research proposal is a major component of the course. The course is open to all students and fellows and it is a core course for both neuroscience and pharmacology. (students can be exempted from this course if they pass the exam given at the beginning of the course. If they are exempted, they would then take Methods in Pharmacology instead as a requirement.)

Dr. John Wagner (Neuroscience), Director, Dr. Michael Kharas, Course Co-Director

The Pharmacology Seminar Series is a series of presentations by invited speakers from universities and the pharmaceutical industry discussing topics of importance in the broad field of pharmacology. These topics include both scientific and policy presentations. Students may choose to have lunch with the speaker to discuss a wide range of topics in an informal atmosphere. In addition, each student meets as part of a small group with one speaker after the seminar to further discuss the selected topic.

This course is designed to present basic principles for understanding the rationale behind development of drug therapy with consideration of the factors involved in individual variability, pharmacokinetics and pharmacogenomics. Topics will include: dose-response, drug efficacy and potency, drug absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion, the effects of liver and kidney disease on dose-response, drugs in the young, the elderly and pregnancy. In addition, guest lecturers from industry and the FDA will discuss drug development from their respective points of view.

Chemical biology is a diverse and evolving field involving chemical approaches to studying and manipulating biological systems. In this course, students will develop an understanding of chemical reactions used in the synthesis and biosynthesis of small molecules and macromolecules, and of the chemical principles that underlie enzyme function and receptor pharmacology. These topics are at the core of modern molecular pharmacology and are essential to understanding how drugs are currently developed in the pharmaceutical industry. At the end of the course students give an oral presentation on a current topic of their choosing in chemical biology.

The goal of the Signal Transduction Module is to provide students with an understanding of the basic recurring themes in cell signaling mechanisms and to familiarize the students with a majority of the key signal transduction pathways. The course comprises approximately 30 lectures, each 1.5 hours in length. An emphasis is placed on: 1) the use of pharmacologic and chemical tools to study problems in signal transduction; and 2) structural insights into signaling mechanisms based on x-ray, NMR and computational approaches. By the end of the course students feel comfortable reading and comprehending journal articles related to the latest findings in signal transduction.

The Systems Pharmacology Module occupies the third quarter of the year-long Introduction to Pharmacological Principles. The 9 week course is arranged into three modules: 5 sessions in the first module cover general pharmacological principles, 9 sessions in the second module focus on nervous and circulatory systems, and 10 sessions in the third and final module cover host defense and renal and endocrine systems. An understanding of systems pharmacology is necessary and valuable for all Pharmacology graduate students.

This course focuses on the principles and applications of modern cancer therapeutic approaches. Lecture topics range from traditional cytotoxic and anti-mitotic agents, to natural products and their chemistry, to biology and immunologic therapies, to rationally designed targeted small molecule inhibitors. Basic principles underlying mechanisms of cancer cell death, angiogenesis, and radiobiology and imaging are also covered. Cancer stems cells and therapeutic approaches focused on cancer stem cells are also discussed.

The RCR course is open to all members of the Tri-Institutional (Tri-I) and WCMC Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) communities. Successful completion of the course is required for all trainees, fellows, participants, and scholars receiving support through NIH or NSF Institutional Research Training Grants, Individual Fellowship Awards, Career Development Awards (Institutional and Individual), Research Education Grants, Dissertation Research Grants, or other grant programs with a training component that requires instruction in responsible conduct of research as noted in the Funding Opportunity Announcement. The responsible conduct of research is the practice of scientific investigation with integrity. Training in this area is an essential component of research training; awareness and application of established professional norms and ethical principles is required in the performance of all activities related to scientific research. Weill Cornell Medical College is committed to fostering an environment that promotes the practice of scientific investigation with integrity. This course is intended to help fulfill that commitment.