The Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics plays an important role in the educational and research missions of the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center. Our faculty provides professional instruction in the schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, Allied Health and Graduate Studies. The Department offers Ph.D. and M.D./Ph.D. degrees. We are deeply committed to graduate and post-doctoral training. Our trainees successfully compete for prestigious positions in academia, industry and the government.

In addition to teaching, our faculty conducts cutting edge research in such disciplines as cardiovascular, pulmonary, gastrointestinal, renal, central nervous system and behavioral pharmacology. Our faculty’s research interests also include the areas of drug metabolism, molecular and cellular signaling, integrins and adhesion molecules and pain control. Since 2001, we have hired eleven new faculty, renovated over 14,000 sq. ft. of laboratory space, expanded our graduate and post-doctoral training programs and significantly increased our extramural funding. The Department’s research funding now ranks in the top 25% of medical school pharmacology departments. We were also awarded a COBRE grant from the National Institutes of Health, “Mentoring in Cardiovascular Biology” the purpose of which is to train junior research faculty. In conjunction with this COBRE grant, we have developed a number of state-of-the-art core facilities within the Department including, proteomics, cardiovascular function, cell culture, histology and imaging. Additional core facilities have also been developed and are available within the Health Sciences Center.

Overall, we have made substantial progress toward our goal of establishing a program in “Integrative Pharmacological Sciences” and the unique place this program occupies among academic medical centers nationwide. This theme, in which we can exploit molecular information in the context of systems biology, will be crucial for harvesting the fruits of the human genome, developing new therapeutics and providing the best possible education for our health professionals.

The Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics would like to express our profound gratitude to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) Foundation and the Astellas USA Foundation for their generous support in aiding our recovery in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.