Greetings from the research administrative team in the College.
The change of the color of the leaves reminds us of the change of season and everything we love about this season. This is also a time of some leadership changes in the College. After having had the privilege of serving as the Department Head of Pharmaceutical Sciences for eight years, I have transitioned to a new role, as Associate Dean for Research with the College. Dr. Hemachand Tummala has stepped in as the interim Department Head until a search is conducted to fill the position. With his years of experience, Dr. Tummala is well qualified to lead the Department through this transition.
As I transition to my new role, I would like to reflect on some of the major accomplishments of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences during my time as the Department Head. On the academic front, two new courses were developed including a pharmacogenomics elective in the PharmD program and an advanced biomedical and pharmacogenomics course in the Ph.D. program. Around 33 Ph.D. students graduated from the department during this period, bringing the total Ph.D. graduates to 44. Most recently, the Department established a new M.S. program in pharmaceutical sciences. I hope you enjoy reading about our recent Ph.D. graduates and the new M.S. program included in this newsletter.
Over the years, the research program in pharmaceutical sciences has seen significant growth through increased grant funding, growth in the Ph.D. program, the establishment of endowed faculty positions, and enhancement of research infrastructure. During this period, Cancer has evolved into a major research focus in the Department. Recently, Dr. Joshua Reineke received the first NIH R01 funding in the College. Taken together, these efforts have helped to double the department’s average annual grant funding from less than $500,000 to $1 million. Besides the research growth, the department has also seen significant growth in the creation of intellectual property and licensing of technologies. To date, over ten patents have been issued and seven technology development licenses have been executed with start-up companies.
With the generous support of our donors, the Department was able to establish two endowed faculty positions (Markl Faculty scholar and Haarberg Endowed Chair) in cancer. Especially, the Haarberg’s have been an integral part of the research growth in the department through their $3.3 million investment in people and research infrastructure. The Department leveraged the support from the Haarberg’s to secure state funding to expand the research space and establish a new research center. The concerted efforts of our faculty, academic leaders, and donors over the years culminated in the establishment of a new center for drug, disease, and delivery with funding from the South Dakota Board of Regents ($3.9 million for 5 years). This 3D center will leverage the department’s research strengths in drug, disease, and delivery to repurpose drugs for cancer and other diseases through a university-industry-clinical collaborative framework. The long-term vision of this effort is to establish a permanent drug development center at SDSU. Besides elevating the department’s research efforts and graduate education, this center will help the department to develop a unique niche in drug repurposing and emerge as a national leader.
None of these accomplishments would have been possible without the outstanding efforts of our faculty, staff, students, alumni, donors, and other stakeholders. I’m deeply grateful for their support. I would also like to thank the Deans (Drs. Hedge, Mort, and Hansen) I have worked with during my time as department head.
Finally, I’m excited about my new role with the College. For a long-time, the research in the College was mainly focused on the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences. However, over the last few years, the College has also seen significant research growth in the Department of Pharmacy Practice and Allied and Population Health. As you will see later in this newsletter, our faculty are carrying out impactful population health research. Given the diverse academic programs offered in the College, there are significant research and scholarship opportunities, spanning the entire mission of the College, including the scholarship of teaching and learning, bench research, practice, and population-based research. To this end, the 3D center and the Center for Practice Innovation (CPIC) are great assets to grow the research enterprise in the College. I look forward to working with various stakeholders to develop a collective vision for research and scholarship in the College.
I hope you take some time to enjoy the fall foliage!
Four more students have earned their doctorates in pharmaceutical sciences through the College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions this spring and summer to bring the total to 44 since 2007.
The new grads and their faculty advisers are: Yue Huang and Shenggang Wang, both under now-Professor Emeritus Xiangming Guan; Ranjini Sankaranarayanan, under associate professor Jayarama Gunaje; and Ailin Guo, under associate professor Josh Reineke.
Successful SDSU pharmacy researcher Omathanu Perumal has accepted the challenge to create even more research in the college.
On Sept. 8, Dan Hansen, dean of the College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions at South Dakota State University, announced that Perumal would move to associate dean of research effective Sept. 22. He has served as head of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences since the 2013 retirement of Department Head Emeritus Chandradhar Dwivedi. Perumal’s new position became open with the June 22 retirement of Professor Emeritus Xiangming Guan.
Perumal has served on the SDSU faculty since 2005, when he arrived here after a year as a postdoctoral fellow at Wayne State in Detroit.
His roots are in India. He received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in pharmacy in India, where he also worked as a lecturer and senior research fellow until coming to the University of Kentucky as a postdoctoral scholar in 2003.
At SDSU, he was promoted from assistant professor to associate professor (2009) to professor (2014.)
Professor Hemachand Tummala has been named interim head of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at South Dakota State University.
Tummala, who has been at SDSU since 2008, will continue to serve as graduate program coordinator. The transition became official Sept. 22, when professor Omathanu Perumal was chosen as the associate dean for research.
Tummala will serve until a permanent department head is identified. The plan is to launch a search in spring 2022.
College Dean Dan Hansen said, “I am excited to work with Dr. Tummala as he assumes this new role and have the utmost confidence that he will be successful leading the department over the next six to eight months.”
Putting people addicted to meth on the road to recovery is the goal of the Stigma, Treatment, Avoidance and Recovery in Time Program for Psychostimulant Support in Rural South Dakota.
The three-year, $500,000 Health Resources and Services Administration project seeks to give patients age 25 to 54 and their families greater access to effective prevention, treatment and recovery services, according to South Dakota State University assistant professor Erin Miller, who leads the START-SD-PSS project.
Miller is also co-director of an HRSA project focused on opioid use disorder, known as START-SD, which began last fall. Both projects are part of research done through SDSU’s Community Practice Innovation Center, which uses a community-based, holistic approach to connect patients with services that will improve their quality of life.
“We know when someone is using substances, it’s usually more than one substance. The top three are alcohol, opioids and methamphetamines, also known as psychostimulants,” explained Miller, who is a faculty member in SDSU’s Department of Allied and Population Health. “This grant allows us to do additional work specifically geared toward psychostimulants that could not be addressed through the opioid project.”
Leaders in the pharmaceutical industry and beyond are advertising for research scientists with a master’s degree for jobs paying $55,000 to $90,000 per year.
Those two additional years of schooling provide students in pharmacy, chemistry, biochemistry or biotechnology a chance to start the
climb the career ladder at a point higher than the first rung, according to professor Hemachand Tummala, graduate program coordinator in the College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions at South Dakota State University.
To serve that job market, the college began a Master of Science degree in pharmaceutical sciences this fall.
South Dakota Board of Regents approved the two-year program in May but final administrative approval was delayed until July, so there was little time to recruit before classes were to begin in late August, Tummala said. That means there won’t actually be any students in the program until spring or fall 2022, he said.
SDSU is easing into the program, looking for one to four students that first year. They will take classes with students in the doctorate in pharmaceutical sciences program.
Tummala said the master’s in pharmaceutical sciences program would be a good option for the student who didn’t want to go to medical school or for those who didn’t get into medical school but still want to be in the health field.
“It is especially suitable for those who are excited about learning the process of new drug discovery and development. Government research institutes and research and development divisions in the pharmaceutical industry as well as large hospitals, are all seeking M.S. graduates. Further, there are employment opportunities for pharmaceutical sciences graduates in regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration,” Tummala said.
