Department of Medicine

Welcome to the Division of Clinical Pharmacology

Our mission is to provide a national center of expertise in clinical pharmacology incorporating drug discovery, drug development, and optimization of drug use; to facilitate scientific knowledge transfer in clinical pharmacology through basic science collaborations and industry partners; to educate and train clinical scientists to pursue technologies in clinical pharmacology and train the next generation of clinicians in therapeutics; to improve therapeutic outcomes for clinical patient care; and support the commercialization of research technologies in clinical pharmacology, and thereby accelerate the translation of research discoveries to commercialization.

The fundamental premise of the concept of translational research is that insights acquired in in vitro or animal model systems can be used to develop hypotheses which can be tested in humans; conversely, clinical observations in humans can be used to generate hypotheses which can be developed and tested in in vitro or animal model systems. Combined, these two approaches promise to go a long way toward enhancing our understanding of the basic physiological mechanisms involved in response to drug therapy and contribute to improved therapy.