September 9, 2024

The College of Pharmacy is delighted to welcome Rahela Zaman, PhD, and Javier Granados, PharmD, as its 2024 Postdoctoral Collegiate Fellows.

 

The Postdoctoral Collegiate Fellows Program (PCFP) launched in 2023 with the goal of increasing the representation of future faculty in STEM. These fellowships provide an opportunity for recent PhD and PharmD graduates to devote their time to pursuing independent research and participating in pedagogical and professional development activities.

 

The program aims to establish a pipeline of scholars interested in an academic career in academia whose work will enhance the diversity of biomedical research and the academic community. The fellowships are for one year, with an opportunity to extend for a second year.

 

Dr. Zaman’s expertise is in nanomedicine and drug delivery research. She earned her doctorate in biomedical science at the University of Monash, Australia (Malaysia Campus). Her doctoral research focused on developing a nanoparticle carrier to enable oral delivery of insulin, the findings of which were published in several leading journals, most recently Pharmaceutics. She has also investigated the role of dietary supplements in the battle against COVID-19 (Phytotherapy Research, 2024) and the development of therapeutic proteins to precisely kill cancer cells (J. Control Release, 2022). 

 

She comes to the College from UCSI University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where she was a postdoctoral research associate. During her fellowship, she will work with Ashlee Brunaugh,  Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, whose lab focuses on improving methods of inhaled drug delivery to treat respiratory diseases.

 

Dr. Granados is a 2024 graduate of the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin) College of Pharmacy. He earned his bachelor’s degree in biology, ethics and leadership in healthcare at UT-Austin. He held a 2-month summer research fellowship through MICHR with Dan Hertz, Associate Professor of Clinical Pharmacy, at the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research (MICHR) and continued working with Dr. Hertz as a research volunteer.

In the Hertz lab, Dr. Granados helped analyze clinical data on the toxicity of topical fluorouracil in patients with DPYD gene variants. About 6% of the population carry a variant of this gene that limits the body’s ability to metabolize and remove -fluorouracil (5-FU), a drug often used to treat colorectal, head, neck, and sometimes breast cancer. Patients with the gene have a much higher risk of experiencing severe toxicity after treatment. This work was presented at the 2023 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting and published in Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38060335/). 

 

Previously, as an extern at Pfizer, he analyzed manuscripts and research protocols for RSV vaccine research. At the University of Bath in Bath in the United Kingdom, he assisted with oncology chemical synthesis research. Dr. Hertz will advise and mentor Dr. Granados during his fellowship on projects relating to the clinical translation of DPYD genotyping for patients receiving fluoropyrimidine chemotherapy. 

 

“We are excited about the expertise and new perspectives on research that these new fellows will bring to our labs, and we’re pleased to support them as they develop new scientific and professional skills as they prepare for the next phase of their careers,” says Regina McClinton, Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. “We are confident their research will improve therapies for devastating diseases and that their work will improve care for underrepresented groups.”

 

An inaugural PCFP fellow, Mercy Okezue, who worked with Dr Brunaugh in 2023, will begin a faculty position at Michigan State University in August after a year in the fellowship program. Zhang Jie, another 2023 fellow, continues her fellowship working under the mentorship of James Moon, J. G. Searle Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, for another year.

 

“One goal of PCFP is to launch future faculty, hopefully here at the college if we have an opening, but certainly into a tenure-track position,” McClinton notes. “Mercy’s achieving this after only a year of her fellowship speaks to the quality of the fellows we are attracting and the value of mentorship.”