Interdepartmental Training in Pharmacological Sciences

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This new application requests support for the newly re-designed University of Michigan (U-M) Pharmacological Sciences Training Program (PSTP). The goal of the PSTP is to develop a diverse pool of well-trained biomedical scientists who have the technical, operational and professional skills to conduct pharmacological research in an ethically responsible and rigorous manner, and to enter diverse careers in the biomedical research workforce. Annual support for 12 trainees (6-Year 2 and 6-Year 3 Trainees in any one year) is requested throughout the five years of funding. The U-M PSTP is a long-standing collaboration between the Medical School and the College of Pharmacy that provides synergistic, translational education, research training, and career development for pre-doctoral trainees in four degree-granting programs: Pharmacology, Biological Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, and Pharmaceutical Sciences. The new, competency-based PSTP curriculum, which includes an experiential program in Real-World Drug Discovery, is designed to provide trainees with a strong foundational understanding of the pharmacological sciences, to provide training in the performance of rigorous and reproducible research, and to provide career development, teamwork, and leadership training, all under the direction of well-trained and dedicated faculty mentors. An extensive and successful alumni base provides career mentorship, networking, and future employment opportunities. PSTP mentors encourage trainees to think broadly about research problems in human disease while focusing their thesis research on a critical, unmet gap in knowledge using rigorous experimental design and methods. This re-designed strong, interdisciplinary, yet individualized, training in the pharmacological sciences will give trainees a distinct advantage in that they will be rapidly employable and well positioned to contribute to the NIH mission to discover new medicines. The development of novel and effective therapeutic agents is a critical, on-going global need that requires rigorously trained, innovative team players to solve critical problems in health care. It is essential that the US continue to produce doctoral-level scientists from diverse backgrounds with broad training in pharmacological sciences and experimental therapeutics who understand basic science and translational medicine. U-M is a premiere institution in research and training of graduate students in the biomedical sciences on a global scale. Although U-M has individual graduate programs in the Departments associated with this training program, the PSTP is the only program at U-M that draws upon the expertise of faculty, alumni, the Michigan Drug Discovery Institute, and the enthusiasm of students across these units to fertilize interdisciplinary education, collaborative research, career development, and team-based approaches to innovation and translation in target discovery and development of experimental therapeutics.