The USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the USC School of Pharmacy have launched the Interdisciplinary Program in Drug Discovery (iPIDD) to strengthen graduate student training.

Traditionally, the development of new drug therapies has followed a linear course, with little interaction between the chemists who created compounds, pharmacologists who studied them and physicians who evaluated them in clinical trials.

But as the drug discovery process has grown more sophisticated, the field has increasingly become a more interdisciplinary and collaborative endeavor.

“By providing increased opportunity for interaction among chemists and pharmacologists, iPIDD will better prepare graduate students for working within the interdisciplinary model of drug discovery that is quickly becoming the norm in both industry and academia,” said Joseph Aoun, dean of the college and holder of the Anna H. Bing Dean’s Chair.

“Critically, the new program also supports our aim to tightly link research and training in fundamental fields like chemistry with related efforts in the applied sciences.”

The program, which will enroll its first class of students in fall 2005, will bring together faculty and students in the chemistry department with those in the department of pharmaceutical sciences.

“Students want this kind of interdisciplinary training and broad exposure,” said program director Charles McKenna, professor of chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences.

“Working in an integrated pharmaceutical company, they will need to know more than just how to synthesize compounds. They will need to be able to talk with the pharmacologists and biologists.”

McKenna’s own work developing anti-viral and other drugs has benefited from his many collaborations with USC pharmaceutical scientists.

Tom Upton is the kind of student iPIDD has been designed to attract. He is one of six chemistry doctoral students already benefiting from the new program.

“My grandfather died of brain cancer, and that has been a motivating factor for me. I have aspirations of developing a cure for brain cancer some day,” Upton said. “So, I had a clear purpose in coming to graduate school – I want to go into the pharmaceutical industry.”

This fall, Upton and his peers at University Park are taking “Drug Design and Discovery,” an interdisciplinary, team-taught course offered by the pharmacy school. They are able to participate actively in the class, held seven miles away on USC’s Health Sciences campus, via a relatively low-cost, Web-based videoconferencing technology that McKenna set up for iPIDD.

“What we want to do is give chemistry students who are synthesizing drugs some exposure to how you look at the behavior of a drug in the body, and where it goes once it is in the body. When administered orally, how well does it make it into the bloodstream?

“Those are questions that must be addressed if a compound is eventually to have potential as an actual drug for the clinic,” McKenna said.

Ian Haworth, associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences, will be the co-director of iPIDD.

“We’ve been doing this informally for years, but formalizing it will enable more students to take part and help us tap the full potential of both departments,” Haworth said. “There’s a real need for this.”

Thinking about career options before they even start graduate school is a trend that has driven student interest in iPIDD, said Sarah Hamm-Alvarez, the Gavin S. Herbert Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences and a member of the program’s steering committee.

“Students are more concerned with getting a job after they graduate, and many employers [in science] are asking for more interdisciplinary experience. Some are demanding it,” she said.

“Drug discovery is a focal point of the School of Pharmacy’s research and graduate education programs,” said Timothy M. Chan, dean of the USC School of Pharmacy. “This joint effort with the department of chemistry provides us with a unique opportunity to synergize the development of a new direction for graduate education.”