Albany, NY – May 3, 2016 – Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences Professor Tom Lodise, Pharm.D., Ph.D, has been named chair of the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group’s Pharmacokinetics Special Emphasis Panel.
The Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG) was formed in 2013 through a $62 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. Led by investigators at Duke University and the University of California San Francisco, the ARLG’s objective is to “prioritize, design, and execute clinical research that will reduce the public health threat of antibacterial resistance.”
The United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published a paper in 2013 in which it described antimicrobial/antibacterial resistance as “one of our most serious” health threats. The CDC notes that each year in the United States at least two million people become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and at least 23,000 people die each year as a direct result of these infections.
Dr. Lodise will serve a two-year term as chair of the Pharmacokinetics Special Emphasis Panel (pharmacokinetics is the study of how a drug moves into, through, and out of the body). The Pharmacokinetics Panel includes investigators from the University of Buffalo, Duke University, Hartford Hospital Center for Anti-Infective Research and Development, Harvard University, University of Southern California, Wayne State University, and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
The goal of the Panel is to identify pharmacologic strategies that optimize the use of existing antibacterial drugs in areas that include enhancing their efficacy, reducing their toxicity, and minimizing the emergence of resistance.
Dr. Lodise has been collaborating with investigators at the ARLG since 2014 when he was named the principal investigator on a two-year, $1.6 million project funded by the organization. The goal of the project (named PROVIDE) is to determine the optimal dosing strategy for the antibiotic vancomycin in patients suffering from MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) bloodstream infections. Results from the PROVIDE study are expected to be published later this year.
About Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
Founded in 1881, Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences is a private, independent institution with a long tradition of academic and research excellence. The College is committed to educating the next generation of leaders in the health care professions and translating scientific discoveries into therapies that benefit humankind. In addition to its doctor of pharmacy program, ACPHS offers six bachelor’s programs and five graduate programs in the health sciences. The College has campuses in Albany, New York and Colchester, Vermont.