PharmGKB welcomes Alie Fohner to the team

We are pleased to welcome scientific curator Alison (Alie) Fohner to the PharmGKB team. Alie recently earned her PhD in Public Health Genetics at the University of Washington, where she worked with the Pharmacogenomics Research Network group that focuses on rural and underserved populations. Her dissertation included an analysis of genetic and environmental drivers of variation in cytochrome P450 expression in Alaska Native people, and a recommendation for reconciling conflicting ethical and statistical demands in conducting research with historically marginalized populations.  She is excited to be starting with PharmGKB, 10 years after attending a lecture by Russ Altman that inspired her interest in pharmacogenetics, and to be back at Stanford, where she received both a BS and MS in Biology.

Dr. Michelle Whirl-Carrillo promoted to Associate Director of PharmGKB

PharmGKB is delighted to announce the promotion of Dr. Michelle Whirl-Carrillo to Associate Director.

Dr. Whirl-Carrillo joined PharmGKB in 2002 as the project's first Scientific Curator. After briefly leaving PharmGKB to join the DTC genotyping start-up 23andMe, she returned in 2009 as the Assistant Director.

We congratulate Michelle on her achievement.

PharmGKB is looking to fill a Scientific Curator position on our team.  Below is a description of the responsibilities of a curator at PharmGKB. 

To apply, search for Scientific Curator - 61462 under Staff Positions at jobs.stanford.edu

·      Read pharmacogenomic experimental literature, analyzing articles for details about gene variant-drug relationships to enter into PharmGKB database; interpret results and conclusions from this literature and summarizes these for PharmGKB.  This may involve searching other public genomics databases, making inferences, and mapping variant locations between genomic sequences and unique assigned identifiers.

·      Evaluate and synthesize evidence extracted from primary pharmacogenomic literature as above, including contradictory results, and write conclusions about the effects of particular genotypes upon response to specific drugs.

·      Create drug pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics pathways based on evaluation of literature using PharmGKB proprietary software and writes a detailed description of the pathway process, alone or in collaboration with domain experts, that is published both online and in a peer-reviewed journal.

·      Write detailed literature review of important pharmacogenetics genes (VIPs), alone or in collaboration with domain experts, that is published both online and in a peer-reviewed journal.

·      Co-author CPIC genotype-based drug dosing guidelines for peer-reviewed publication.  Literature reviews, provide background information and manuscript writing.

·      Participate in scientific data consortia- helps to design data collection forms; consolidate and curate primary data from individual labs; work with developer to design QC tests for data; communicate with other scientists about data discrepancies/questions and standards for data inclusion; help with manuscript preparation for publication.

·      Support all scientific needs of PharmGKB, including but not limited to PGx summaries, drug label curation, curating gene haplotype and phenotype definitions, drug-gene relationships, curation of NLP relations for incorporation into the curation workflow, handling of rare variants, blogging, genome annotations and PharmGKB recommendations for clinical use of variant-drug pairs.  Attend and present at scientific meetings and present academic lectures as needed.

·      Work with curation and development teams to design, improve and test new website functionality and UI for PharmGKB.  Report issues with existing functionality and suggest improvements or new features.

·      Interact and respond as required to funding agencies, FDA, feedback, etc.

·      Any and all other curator projects as they arise.

PharmGKB welcomes Julia Barbarino to the team

We are pleased to welcome scientific curator Julia Barbarino to the PharmGKB team. Julia recently completed her master's in Medical Molecular Genetics from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, where her research focused on epigenetic modifications of the apolipoprotein E gene and their role in human longevity. While undertaking her degree, she had the opportunity to receive lectures in pharmacogenomics, and is excited to be working with PharmGKB in this area of genetics. In addition to her master's degree, Julia also holds a degree in Biochemistry from UCLA.

PharmGKB welcomes Ugur Hodoglugil to the team

We are pleased to welcome scientific curator Ugur Hodoglugil to the PharmGKB team. Previously, Ugur has worked as research scientist on identifying the genetic determinants of complex traits (lipid and other metabolic phenotypes) and population structure at Gladstone Institutes, University of California San Francisco where he analyzed genome-wide scans data for quantitative trait locus analysis in families and studied the effects of variations of several candidate genes on lipid metabolism in unrelated individuals. He  performed different assays with transgenic/knockout mice and cell culture experiments to show functionality of the variants or the phenotype of gene(s) of interest. He has obtained his M.D. and Medical Pharmacology, Ph.D. degrees from Ankara, Turkey.

PharmGKB welcomes Daniel Klein to the team

We are pleased to welcome curator Daniel Klein to the PharmGKB team. Daniel recently graduated from the University of California, San Diego. His background is physics (specializing in astrophysics) with minors in biology, chemistry, and psychology. During his senior year at UCSD, Daniel worked as a part-time curator for the PharmGKB. We thank UCSD for providing Daniel a broad introduction to pharmacogenomics during his graduate course which included lectures from such PGx notables including Darrell Abernethy and Richard Weinshilboum.

PharmGKB has an opening for a scientific curator

PharmGKB is looking to fill a Curator position in the Department of Genetics at Stanford University.  We are specifically looking for someone with a clinical or pharmacology background to add to the curation team. 

This position works with a group of curators to collect and analyze information from the scientific literature as well as through direct submissions, abstracting this information in the required format(s), verifying for accuracy, compiling educated summaries of the literature, discovering new facts by analyzing the collected data and refining the submitted data.

Qualifications required:

PharmD, PhD, MD
Three - five years relevant experience
In-depth training and knowledge of pharmacology, genetics, molecular biology, and/or bioinformatics
In-depth training and knowledge of pharmaceuticals including dosing, interactions and use.
Familiar with disease areas including cancer, cardiovascular disease and asthma as well as publicly available biological databases
Strong analytical, organization and communication (English written and oral) skills
Detail oriented
Desired Qualifications:
Seven years relevant experience
Experience with relational databases, data integration and statistics preferred
Enjoys public speaking

Please apply here if you are interested in this position.