Faculty

Divya A. Varkey, Pharm.D., M.S., UHCOP clinical professor and graduate program director for the M.S. in Pharmacy Leadership and Administration, has been elected president-elect designee of the Texas Society of Health-System Pharmacy for 2026-27. Varkey brings extensive experience in pharmacy leadership, education and health-system administration to the statewide role.

Researchers at the University of Houston College of Pharmacy have discovered an unexpected simple strategy to improve the performance of mRNA vaccines and gene therapeutics: adding salt. The findings, published in Small, address one of the biggest challenges facing modern gene medicine — getting fragile therapeutic material to the right place inside cells.

In two new articles published in Nature journals, Ashok Kumar, Else and Philip Hargrove Endowed Professor of Drug Discovery at UHCOP and director of the Institute of Muscle Biology and Cachexia, explains how TAK1, a protein inside RMS cells, helps rhabdomyosarcoma tumors grow. His research also found that tumor cells rely on the IRE1α-XBP1 cellular stress-response pathway to survive. Blocking either TAK1 or IRE1α-XBP1 slowed tumor growth and helped cancer cells develop into normal muscle cells.