Pharmacy Student Earns Research Award

By Gabrielle Olya on October 21, 2009 12:39 PM

USC School of Pharmacy graduate student Tim Bensman’s work in the lab of professor Paul Beringer may prove to be an integral step toward the treatment of inflammation caused by cystic fibrosis.

His innovative work with the antibiotic doxycycline was performed over this past summer through a fellowship program awarded to him by the School of Pharmacy. An abstract based on this work earned him the 2009 M. Kelli Jordan Travel Award to attend the American College of Clinical Pharmacy’s annual meeting.

At the meeting, which took place on Oct. 19 at the Anaheim Convention Center, Bensman won the best student poster award over six other student finalists from schools across the country.

“While everyone’s work had great potential, what differentiates your research is having the opportunity to actively engage in a project and take responsibility and ownership for conducting its experiments,” Bensman said. “Providing a level of evidence and rationale for real-world implications further enhances your work,” he said.

Bensman’s research focuses on the immunomodulatory effects of doxycycline, commonly used as an antibiotic for the treatment of cystic fibrosis, a disease that affects 30,000 people in the United States and 70,000 worldwide. The disease is caused by a disregulated chloride channel (the CFTR), which results in reduced airway surface liquid predisposing the patient to chronic infection and inflammation.

Bensman, who is pursuing a joint PharmD/Ph.D in clinical and experimental therapeutics at the School of Pharmacy, has been working under the guidance of Beringer, whose lab focuses on ways to use pharmacologic therapies to preserve lung function and quality of life for individuals afflicted with cystic fibrosis.

TAGS: pharmacy, research

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