Department of Pharmacology and Physiology

A Letter from the Chair

Welcome to the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology at Saint Louis University — a vibrant, multidisciplinary, and dynamic academic community that thrives on education, research, collaboration, inclusivity and innovation.

The mission of our department is to:

1. Provide outstanding graduate and medical student training
2. Offer multidisciplinary research opportunities for postdoctoral fellows
3. Advance scientific knowledge through rigorous research and scholarship
4. Facilitate the development of novel therapeutics to improve human health

Our faculty, students, and postdoctoral fellows pursue research across a broad range of areas, including pain, metabolic disorders, neuroinflammatory diseases, cancer, proteomics, medicinal chemistry, and translational science.

The department has an excellent record of success in securing research support from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, private foundations, and industry partners. Of note, our NIH-funded T32 training grant in pharmacological sciences has been continuously supported for more than 30 years. These prestigious awards are granted to only a select group of programs nationwide each year, underscoring both the strength and national recognition of our graduate training program.

Our students and postdoctoral fellows go on to secure prominent positions in academia, government, biotechnology and the pharmaceutical industry following their research training at SLU.

We benefit from outstanding core research facilities within the School of Medicine and across the University. The department serves as the home base of the Institute for Translational Neuroscience, which spans multiple schools and departments, and our faculty also participates in other collaborative centers, including the Institute for Drug and Biotherapeutic Innovation and the Institute for Clinical and Translational Sciences at Washington University.

Generous internal funding mechanisms are in place to support the generation of pilot data for major grant applications. In addition, our faculty have access to the nationally acclaimed Cortex Innovation Community and other startup-supporting institutions in the St. Louis region — one of the nation’s fastest-growing hubs for medical and biotechnology innovation.

I invite you to explore our website to learn more about our research, training programs, and community. I also encourage you to review our current recruitment opportunities, which will help propel the department to the next level of academic and research excellence.

Daniela Salvemini, Ph.D.

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Pharmacological Sciences Training Grant

The SLU School of Medicine Department of Pharmacology and Physiology administers the  Ruth L. Kirchstein National Research Service Award Institutional Predoctoral Training Program in Pharmacological Sciences (T32 GM008306). Our goal is to develop a diverse pool of outstanding scientists trained in modern principles of drug action and discovery.

Students are drawn from graduate programs in biochemistry, molecular biology, biology, biomedical engineering, chemistry, molecular microbiology and immunology, and pharmacology and physiology.

Currently, there are 31 preceptors mentoring students on research projects that contain important elements of pharmacology and/or drug discovery across a wide range of disciplines. Students in the training program receive 12 months of financial support and continued mentoring and guidance for their time at SLU.

For more information about our training program, please select the blue “NIGMS T32 Training Program” tab at the top of this page. If you are a first or second-year predoctoral student in one of the six aforementioned graduate departments and would like to participate in our training program, please contact Gina Yosten, Ph.D., at gina.yosten@health.slu.edu.