New projects at the UH College of Pharmacy target a range of conditions, developing new approaches to prevention, diagnosis and treatment that could improve patient outcomes.
Key Takeaways
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UH College of Pharmacy researchers receive more than $1 million to target three major healthcare challenges: sepsis (leading cause of hospital deaths), Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (costing $305B nationally), and sickle cell disease-related depression.
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Breakthrough Sepsis Treatment Seeking Patent: A new dual-action nanomedicine treats sepsis, achieving a 100% survival rate in preclinical trials.
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AI-Powered Drug Repurposing: UH leveraging AI to scan existing, safe, FDA-approved drugs to study treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
University of Houston College of Pharmacy researchers have secured more than $1 million
in new funding to support three separate studies targeting sepsis, Alzheimer's disease
and related dementias, and depression in patients with sickle cell disease.
While the projects address different conditions, each is aimed at improving patient outcomes through new approaches to prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
Fanfei Meng, assistant professor of pharmacy at the UH College of Pharmacy, is developing an approach that could overcome a longstanding challenge in sepsis treatment.
New Drug Delivery System for Sepsis
Assistant professor and Presidential Frontier Faculty member in the Department of Pharmacological and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Fanfei Meng, has developed a promising new nanomedicine for the treatment of sepsis and septic shock—life-threatening conditions that remain among the leading causes of death in hospitals worldwide. His team is now pursuing patent protection for the technology.
“Our preliminary studies have been extremely encouraging,” said Meng. "The nanoparticle formulation reduced drug toxicity, preserved potent antibacterial activity, broadly suppressed inflammatory signaling, and achieved complete survival in a preclinical model of severe sepsis,” said Meng.
Sepsis develops when the body's response to a bacterial infection becomes dysregulated, triggering widespread inflammation that can lead to organ failure and death. Because antibiotics alone are often not enough, Meng developed a nanoparticle that simultaneously delivers two complementary therapies: an antibiotic to eliminate bacteria and an immunomodulator that calms the body's overactive immune response.
The nanoparticle represents a dual approach that could overcome a longstanding challenge in sepsis treatment.
Tiansheng Wang, assistant professor at the UH College of Pharmacy, is using artificial intelligence to identify existing drugs that could be repurposed to help prevent or treat Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
Harnessing the Power of AI to Identify Dementia Treatment
Tiansheng Wang, assistant professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Health Outcomes and Policy, is using artificial intelligence to accelerate the search for dementia treatments by focusing on drug repurposing, which examines whether medicines already used for other health conditions may also benefit people at risk for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
“My project will bring together several types of information that are often studied separately: medication use and other real-world health data, genetic information, cognitive assessments, and brain imaging,” said Wang. “By including these earlier indicators, we may be able to evaluate potential drug effects more accurately than by relying only on diagnoses documented in medical records.”
Onye Ononogbu, research assistant professor at the UH College of Pharmacy, is developing a new screening tool to help clinicians more accurately identify depression in people living with sickle cell disease, whose physical symptoms can overlap with those of depression.
Treatment for sickle cell disease-related depression
Onye Ononogbu, research assistant professor of Pharmacy Practice and Translational Research, is creating a new screening tool built specifically for individuals living with sickle cell disease.
Many of the physical symptoms of SCD, like fatigue, sleep disruption and appetite changes, mirror symptoms of depression, so it becomes very hard to tell whether a patient is depressed, or whether they are simply experiencing the physical reality of living with sickle cell disease.
"Standard depression screening tools were not built with this overlap in mind, which means patients can be misclassified in either direction, missed when they truly need help, or flagged when what they are experiencing is actually a symptom of their disease," said Ononogbu. "We want patients to share their honest experiences, and we want clinicians to bring their clinical expertise. By bringing both perspectives together, we can build a tool that truly supports real-world care.”