SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Millennium Laboratories, a leading provider of pain drug monitoring and education to physicians and staff treating chronic pain, announced today that they have established a joint research program with the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Serving as a teaching and data resource, Millennium Laboratories will provide the UCSD Pharm.D. faculty and student researchers with the resources for original studies in the areas of monitoring the metabolism of pain medications, drug testing and toxicology. The aim of the alliance is to advance research into the use of pain medications that helps to minimize the morbidity and mortality sometimes associated with their use.
The program will be under the direction of Millennium Laboratories Co-Director Amadeo Pesce, Ph.D. and Brookie M. Best, Pharm.D. M.A.S., Assistant Clinical Professor of Pharmacy and Pediatrics, and Rabia S. Atayee, Pharm.D., BCPS, Assistant Clinical Professor of Pharmacy at UC San Diego. Students chosen for the scholarship program from the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences will be involved in clinical investigation projects, conducted at Millennium’s state-of-the-art laboratory facilities and utilizing the company’s substantial database of urine-drug testing for patients on prescription drug therapy for chronic pain. The research projects will be approved by UCSD’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) to meet UCSD and professional practice standards.
Collaboration Success
“Our goal for the collaborative effort with the UCSD School of Pharmacy is to uncover alterations in metabolic pathways which may describe why patients on opioid therapy are subject to morbidity and high rates of mortality,” said Millennium Laboratories Co-Director Dr. Pesce.
That stated goal is already being met with Joanna M. Cole, the first UCSD Pharm.D. student to complete the new research collaboration program with Millennium Laboratories. Her research has been published in the article, “Variability of transdermal fentanyl metabolism and excretion in pain patients,” included in the January/February 2010 edition of the Journal of Opioid Management (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20297612). Cole is the lead author of the article and Dr. Best and Dr. Pesce are co-authors.
Cole chose to research fentanyl because, despite its popularity as a pain analgesic, it has been blamed for thousands of deaths. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid agonist used to control chronic pain and breakthrough pain. It is a rapid acting, effective analgesic, with a potency 75 to 100 times that of morphine. The fentanyl patch is widely used in the U.S. and was ranked number 108 in the top ranking prescriptions by sales in the U.S. in 2008. It was the second deadliest prescription drug in the country between 1998 and 2005, with 3,545 deaths – mostly blamed on the transdermal patch.
“Ideally, we want these collaborative research studies with Millennium Laboratories to educate our Pharm.D. students in therapeutic drug metabolism and allow them a better understanding of these medications,” said Dr. Best. ”The publication of this article demonstrates how we are achieving our aim.”
About UCSD Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
The Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (SSPPS) was founded in 2000 and admitted its first class in 2002. The SSPPS is the only public school of pharmacy in Southern California, and one of only two public pharmacy schools in the state. Its four-year program leads to a doctorate in pharmacy (Pharm.D.) degree and offers unique classroom and clinical training in conjunction with UCSD’s School of Medicine. Second-year pharmacy students in the SSPPS share the same classes with the first-year medical students, and in their fourth year, pharmacy students participate in clinical rotations and advanced practice experiences with medical students. The School also offers a joint PharmD/Ph.D. program that is closely aligned with the drug discovery and development process, therapeutic practices, and outcomes, as well as post-graduate residencies for the Pharm.D. graduates.
In addition, the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences faculty mentor Ph.D. students through joint programs with the School of Medicine and several main campus departments, and train post-doctoral fellows. The School was named in recognition of a $30 million gift from The Skaggs Institute for Research.
The mission of the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences is to provide the highest quality pharmaceutical education, pharmaceutical sciences research, and public service programs in Southern California, and to advance the pharmaceutical sciences, and the clinical care and therapeutic counseling provided by the faculty and the Pharm.D. and Ph.D. students and the post-doctoral fellows and residents.
About Millennium Laboratories
Founded in 2007 in America’s biotech capital, San Diego, Millennium Laboratories is rapidly becoming the Urine Drug Testing (UDT) resource of choice for physicians and staff focused on the treatment of chronic pain. Millennium Laboratories provides the fastest turn-around time in the industry for drug test reporting and final confirmation of results because the company is the only major Urine Testing Laboratory exclusively utilizing the latest cutting-edge technology Liquid Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry/Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). The company is also the only major Urine Drug Testing Laboratory licensed as a training facility for Toxicology Scientists.
Certified, state-of-the-art advanced training at Millennium’s 40,000 sq. ft. campus is a unique research component of UCSD’s doctoral program in Pharmacy. Led by Laboratory Co-Director Amadeo Pesce, Ph.D., world-renowned Toxicologist and author, the Millennium Laboratories team is comprised of experts in mass spectrometry and high throughput chemistry. The company has developed proprietary methodologies that provide the fastest reliable urine drug testing (UDT) confirmations in the nation, usually within one business day. For more information, visit the Millennium Laboratories website, www.becausepainmatters.com
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