Dr. Nancy Muma

Riddhi Chawla

Riddhi Chawla earned her M.S. over the summer while under the instruction of Dr. Rick Dobrowsky. Ms. Chawla defended her M.S. thesis titled “Effect of Cemdomespib in Improving Neuromuscular Junction Innervation and Nerve Axon Myelination in a Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease Mouse Model” on July 16. She is now exploring career opportunities in the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors and pursuing licensure as a registered pharmacist, leveraging her Pharm.D. from India.

Kun Jia

Kun Jia completed her Ph.D. last summer. Dr. Heng Du was her mentor. Dr. Jia defended her dissertation on July 22, 2024. It was titled “Mitochondrial Dysfunction: A Mechanistic Link in the Progression from Normal Aging to Sporadic Alzheimer’s Disease.” She is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts.

Sugandha Patel

Sugandha Patel completed her Ph.D. over the summer under Dr. Rick Dobrowsky’s mentorship. Dr. Patel defended her dissertation titled “Cemdomespin Ameliorates Mitochondrial and ER Stress to Improve Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy” on July 23. Currently, she is searching for work in the field.

Punam Rawal

Punam Rawal graduated with her Ph.D. in the spring and defended her dissertation titled “Clusterin: A Regulator of Glial Biology and Alzheimer’s Disease Pathogenesis” on April 30. She was mentored by Dr. Liqin Zhao. After graduation, she took time off to spend quality time with her two-year-old son and visit her home in Nepal. This fall, she will begin her postdoctoral fellowship at Sanofi in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Graduate students Lina Nerio and Julia Doderer gave poster presentations at this year’s meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

Khloud Ashraf

Khloud is a Fulbright scholar from Egypt and is joining our master’s program. She is a member of the Du lab. Ms. Ashraf received her Bachelor of Clinical Pharmacy from Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt. She is interested in studying neurodegenerative and immunological diseases at the molecular level and feels this is at the core of many medical breakthroughs. Her favorite hobbies are horseback riding and tennis.

Pranali Yadav

Pranali joined our master’s program as part of Dr. Zhao’s lab after earning her B.S. in Pharmacy from Bombay College of Pharmacy, Mumbai, India. After her grandmother’s cancer diagnosis, Ms. Yadav developed a curiosity and sought to explore it further. Because DNA plays a major role in our lives, Ms. Yadav hopes to design medical therapies that are based on our genetic composition. She enjoys painting, which allows her to explore creativity and unwind after a busy day.

Asma Albeladi

Asma is a new Ph.D. student with a master’s degree in Biochemistry. She has joined the Subramanian lab and believes that hands-on experience and practical application are more valuable than theoretical knowledge. Her interest in neuropharmacology, a field that demands both extensive research and experimentation, drives this perspective.

D’Yahna Baker

D’Yahna is a Neuroscience doctoral student under the mentorship of Dr. Zhao. She decided to be a future neuroscientist due to her family history, as her grandfather suffered from ALS and her great-grandmother had Alzheimer’s. Ms. Baker aspires to become a pioneer in neurogenetics, focusing on how genes affect the molecular mechanisms that play a role in neurodegeneration. She loves walking her dogs, reading and painting.

Amina Tbaba

Amina, who earned a B.A. in Chemistry from California State University at Long Beach in 2023, has joined the Neuroscience doctoral program as part of the Smith lab. Ms. Tbaba is interested in how aberrances in the mesolimbic reward pathway influence social bonding and how negative social bonding experiences (such as social loss) may impact long-term social cognition. In her free time, she likes playing video games, knitting, and attempting to train her and her partner’s two cats to do tricks.

This year’s Pharmacology & Toxicology Welcome Picnic took place on October 3 at “Dad” Perry Park, North Shelter. We welcomed two M.S. students and three Ph.D. students to our program this fall. The grill at the North Shelter was mysteriously bent in half and unusable. Fortunately, Dr. Muma rescued the barbecue with her grill from home. Special thanks to Nick Pritchett and Diksha Chugh for organizing, and to our grad students for trying their hand at the grill!

We celebrated Dr. Punam Rawal’s graduation on May 3, 2024 with lunch from Panda Express and a Jayhawk-themed cake. Dr. Rawal earned her Ph.D. in Spring 2024 under the mentorship of Dr. Zhao. This event gave everyone a chance to congratulate Dr. Rawal, as well as enjoy good food and fellowship.

We are saddened to announce the passing of Dr. Morris Faiman in April. Dr. Faiman was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota. He came to the KU Pharmacology & Toxicology Department in 1965 and retired as professor emeritus in 2007. Upon his retirement, Dr. Faiman worked in the Higuchi Biosciences Center as a senior research assistant and then as a research professor in the Life Span Institute Bureau of Child Research. He was a leader in the fields of pharmacology and pharmaceutical chemistry. Dr. Faiman held several patents related to his research and worked to develop drugs to treat alcohol abuse and drug addiction. He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Faiman is survived by his wife Lynne; son, Jeff; and daughter, Janis. He will be missed by many family members, friends and colleagues.

The 39th Annual Mossberg Honors Symposium was held on Wednesday, Jan. 10 in the School of Pharmacy. The keynote address, “Deciphera Pharmaceuticals – From Company Concept to Marketed Oncology Therapeutics,” was given by Dr. Daniel Flynn, recipient of this year’s School of Pharmacy Distinguished Graduate Award. Dr. Flynn is the founder of Deciphera Pharmaceuticals. His presentation provided an overview of his company’s founding, as well as the development of Deciphera’s switch-control inhibitor technology.

After the keynote address, students and postdocs across the School of Pharmacy gave oral research presentations. The Pharmacology & Toxicology presentations were given by Kun Jia, Tienju Wang and Punam Rawal. Ms. Jia’s and Ms. Wang’s presentation was titled “Mitochondria-sequestered Aβ renders synaptic mitochondria vulnerable in the elderly with a risk of Alzheimer’s disease” and Ms. Rawal’s seminar was titled “Clusterin regulates glial activation and neuroinflammation.”

The following individuals participated in the poster session:

• Julia Doderer, “Structural synaptic basis of visual recognition memory”

• Kyle Gossman & Shuwen Yue, “Activity of the mesolimbic reward system in the formation of a pair bond and display of bond-related behaviors in male and female prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster)”

• Adrianna Kirckof, “Partner loss enhances partner seeking behavior and dopamine receptor expression in select brain regions in female prairie voles”

• Lina Nerio, “Role of corticotropin releasing factor in social defeat and social attachment in the prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster)”

• Sugandha Patel, “Schwann Cell PERK is Not Necessary for the Development of Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy but is Necessary for the Efficacy of Cemdomespib”

• Yunwanbin Wang, “Opioid induces increased DNA damage in prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens”

I started my Ph.D. journey in Dr. Rick Dobrowsky’s lab in 2013. I was working on investigating the effects of a molecular chaperone modulator in animal models of peripheral neuropathies. The mentorship from Dr. Dobrowsky and continued support from my committee members Drs. Shi and Zhao, the department, staff and fellow students have made my time at KU an unforgettable experience. 

After graduation, I joined Dr. Michael Snyder’s group as a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University. I’ve always been a fan of personalized medicine and Dr. Snyder is a pioneer in the field. My research focuses on the intersection of the exposome and health. The exposome is a rather new field, which, by definition, encompasses all the environmental exposures across one’s lifetime. Despite tremendous success scientists have made on genomics, our knowledge of the exposome remains limited. Emerging evidence suggests a larger than originally expected role of the exposome in the pathogenesis of many complex diseases. One’s exposome is personal and highly dynamic, thus it shall be studied in a personalized fashion. I took a multi-omic approach to study the exposome at the personal level, where we use a wearable device to track individual exposures and correlate with multi-omic measurements of the internal environment. I studied personal exposome in various settings, such as in health, pregnancy, Crohn’s disease, as well as special environments such as during the wildfire and in hospitals. My responsibilities extended beyond benchwork; I was involved in fundraising, setting up clinical studies, coordinating between teams all over the world and managing a small team of postdocs, technicians, students and visiting scholars.

Life is full of changes, and when change happens, embrace it. During my time at Stanford, I was in charge of the exposome project where we use a wearable device to capture the exposome at the personal level. We were in a shortage of such devices and in need of compact and affordable exposome monitors. I was never trained to be an electrical engineer, yet with the mindset and critical thinking skills I got through my Ph.D. training at KU, I was determined that I could tackle any problem the same way I approach a scientific problem. So I stepped up and built a prototype of our own (of course I omitted all the hair-pulling moments). Now, in hype with the entrepreneurial spirit of Stanford and the Bay Area, I co-founded a startup with my postdoctoral advisor which focuses on providing tools and technologies to advance precision environmental health, using the technology I developed. 

I’m grateful for my Ph.D. training at KU. The two most valuable characteristics I got from graduate school are critical thinking and resilience. The mindset and critical thinking skills have enabled me to solve any scientific problem. I also learned to be resilient, which is extremely important not only in scientific pursuits but also life in general. My time at KU has been truly rewarding and memorable and I wish your time here is filled with even more exciting adventures, remarkable achievements and cherished moments. 

We are currently accepting applications for an Assistant or Associate Professor in Pharmacology and Toxicology for a full-time, tenure-track position. An individual is sought with research expertise in using a systems-based approach to understand mechanisms of disease and drug action, in order to advance disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment for Alzheimer’s disease or other neurological or neuropsychiatric disorders. The position requires teaching graduate and pharmacy students, establishing an active externally funded research program, and service. Our ideal candidate has a demonstrated ability to conduct or contribute to interdisciplinary research projects, a record of collaborative interactions with scientists in diverse fields, and potential for productive collaborations with investigators in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, the School of Pharmacy, and the university as a whole. We look forward to welcoming a new colleague into our department. For more information, visit https://employment.ku.edu/academic/28644BR.

Silvia Fossati, Ph.D., serves as Director and Associate Professor in the Alzheimer’s Center at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She presented a Scientific Seminar on November 17, 2023 entitled, “Cerebrovascular and Cardiac Dysfunction in Alzheimer’s Disease and CAA; a Mitochondria-targeted Therapeutic Strategy.”

Dr. Heng Du, Pharmacology & Toxicology department professor, stated, “Alzheimer’s disease is a chronic disease, primarily attacking the senior population. Beyond toxic protein aggregation, increasing evidence suggests other risk factors for this heterogeneous neurodegenerative disorders such as cardiovascular dysfunction. Dr. Silvia Fossati focuses on the interaction between vascular dysfunction and neurodegeneration from a metabolic and mitochondrial perspective. During her recent visit, Silvia introduced interesting work from her group. They tested the protective effects of carbonic anhydrase inhibitors, which are well-recognized agents for the treatment of glaucoma, edema, and high-altitude sickness, against vascular endothelial lesions and cognitive decline in a mouse model of amyloid deposition in the brain parenchyma, especially blood vessels. These findings from Silvia’s group add evidence to the role of vascular risks in the development of Alzheimer’s disease and shed light on a novel therapeutic avenue for the treatment of this neurodegenerative disease by targeting carbonic anhydrase, a critical mitochondrial enzyme. Of note, recent computational studies using in silico models implicate the therapeutic potential of compounds with dual inhibitory effects on both cholinesterase and carbonic anhydrase for the treatment of Alzheimer’s dementia.”

Rebecca L. Gillani, M.D., Ph.D., is a Physician Investigator in the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Neurology Instructor at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. The title of her March 29, 2024 seminar was “Neuroinflammation Destabilizes Excitatory Synapses, Altering Excitatory Circuit Inputs to Individual Cells.” Dr. Gillani specializes in multiple sclerosis. She uses the techniques she has mastered to analyze neurodegeneration and cares for patients with multiple sclerosis and other neuroimmunology disorders.

Amyloid Pathology Impairs Experience-Dependent Inhibitory Synaptic Plasticity.
Niraula S, Yan SS, Subramanian J. J Neurosci. 2024 Jan 31;44(5):e0702232023. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0702-23.2023. PMID: 38050105; PMCID: PMC10860629.

Human apolipoprotein E glycosylation and sialylation: from structure to function.
Moon HJ, Luo Y, Chugh D, Zhao L. Front Mol Neurosci. 2024 Aug 7;17:1399965. doi: 10.3389/fnmol.2024.1399965. PMID: 39169951; PMCID: PMC11335735.

Limbic oxytocin receptor expression alters molecular signaling and social avoidance behavior in female prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster).
Nerio-Morales LK, Boender AJ, Young LJ, Lamprea MR, Smith AS. Front Neurosci. 2024 Jul 16;18:1409316. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1409316. PMID: 39081850; PMCID: PMC11286410.

Methionine oxidation of clusterin in Alzheimer's disease and its effect on clusterin's binding to beta-amyloid.
Smith AS, Subramanian J, Doderer J, Moskovitz J. Neurosci Lett. 2024 Jul 27;836:137874. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2024.137874. Epub 2024 Jun 9. PMID: 38857696.

Mitochondria-sequestered Aβ renders synaptic mitochondria vulnerable in the elderly with a risk of Alzheimer disease.
Jia K, Tian J, Wang T, Guo L, Xuan Z, Swerdlow RH, Du H. JCI Insight. 2023 Nov 22;8(22):e174290. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.174290. PMID: 37991017; PMCID: PMC10721326.

Population pharmacokinetic analysis of enrofloxacin and its active metabolite ciprofloxacin after intravenous injection to cats with reduced kidney function.
Foster JD, Abouraya M, Papich MG, Muma NA. J Vet Intern Med. 2023 Nov-Dec;37(6):2230-2240. doi: 10.1111/jvim.16866. Epub 2023 Sep 20. PMID: 37728198; PMCID: PMC10658592.

The Support of Our Donors Makes All the Difference

Thank you for your interest in supporting the Pharmacology & Toxicology Department. Your support allows the Department to provide resources for students and can make a profound impact no matter the size. Even small amounts given over time can accumulate to create substantial resources for the department.

Donations allow us to continue the excellence you have come to expect. Donations to the Pharmacology and Toxicology Graduate Student Fund help support our students and allow us to bring in outside speakers.

For a lasting impact on the department, major gifts can establish endowed funds that can be named for you or for someone else and provide financial support in perpetuity.

To make a donation, visit KU PharmTox Give or contact our associate development director, Kyle Zerr, at kzerr@kuendowment.org or 785-832-7477.

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