Pharmacy

A fashion designer stops creating clothing and turns her skills into making surgical masks. Cloth that might have been the mask for the Phantom of the Opera, instead is headed to J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital to become a mask that protects a health care worker in the fight against COVID-19. This, and more, is how West Virginia University is putting skills and resources from its entire campus to battle the pandemic which has killed thousands worldwide.

Researchers at West Virginia University have mapped the crystal structure of a protein that resides in our cells and determined—for the first time—how a drug latches onto it. The findings appear in Communications Chemistry, a Nature research journal.

West Virginia ranks first for fentanyl-related deaths, but it also leads the nation in a more optimistic way: its medical examiners pinpoint the cause of every drug-related death, and the relevant facts populate a unique statewide database. An interdisciplinary research team—involving the WVU School of Pharmacy, the WVU School of Public Health and the West Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner—analyzed data and found that fentanyl deaths are up 122 percent in the state.

West Virginia University’s School of Pharmacy will soon become one of the few pharmacy schools in the nation that leads a center of biomedical research excellence. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, these centers support interdisciplinary, thematically related research into preventing, diagnosing and treating health problems.

Four factors increase the odds that a patient will wind up on chronic opioid therapy, suggests research conducted by a team of researchers led by Nilanjana Dwibedi, assistant professor in the West Virginia University School of Pharmacy.

This class of more than 4,450 is likely a generation prepared for enacting “vital change,” having earned a University record 10 Fulbright Scholarships, two Boren Scholarships, an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a Truman Scholarship. Eight students were named to the Order of Augusta, WVU’s most prestigious student honor.

Renowned West Virginia novelist Ann Pancake leads the list of honorary degree recipients when West Virginia University sends more than 4,450 graduates into the world the weekend of May 11-13 as commencement ceremonies take place in three venues for 13 colleges and schools. Of those graduates, 3,009 have earned their undergraduate degrees or certificates, 1,110 their master’s degrees and 360 have earned their doctorates.

The School of Social Work at West Virginia University shot up into the top third in the latest rankings of graduate programs by U.S. News & World Report.

With age comes a higher prevalence of chronic illness, often resulting in the use of multiple prescription medications at a time. With the help of a new award, a West Virginia University researcher is examining the prevalence and hazards of potentially inappropriate medication prescribing among elderly cancer survivors.

West Virginia University’s LaunchLab Network hosted its first Women’s Pitch Competition on Oct. 26 to encourage female students to push the limits of their entrepreneurial ideas, develop products and business models and showcase the results in a tightly-timed presentation to a panel of judges.