The Cockrell School of Engineering announced on March 10 a new graduate program aimed to give students multidisciplinary experience in pharmaceutical drug discovery and formulation.
The pharmacoengineering portfolio program, which will start in fall 2025, is meant to supplement a graduate degree, program director Pengyu Ren said. The program is a collaboration between the College of Natural Sciences, the Cockrell School of Engineering and the College of Pharmacy — students will take classes offered by all three colleges.
While traditional students are separated by specific individual disciplines, Ren said students in the pharmacoengineering program will have the opportunity to bring together natural science, pharmaceutical science and molecular biology with modern technology to advance the field.
“We want the graduate student to have that background and training, not just in one discipline, but also from other areas,” Ren said.
Ren said drug creation is expensive and time-consuming because failures can happen during different stages of the discovery process. Students can make the process cheaper and more efficient by bringing together different disciplines involved in drug delivery, Ren said.
“We want the students to be educated (so) that they could be the lead on taking a drug from concept all the way to translation and commercialization,” said Tyrone Porter, professor and department chair of biomedical engineering.
Porter said students will model different drugs to narrow down the number of drugs to test. This process will reduce drug discovery costs and increase the drug’s accuracy in treating diseases such cancer, neurological disorders, viral infections and cardiovascular diseases. He said the program will be a bridge for students to cross various disciplines so they can work with experts in pharmacological specialties.
“We’re really training the next generation of leaders,” Porter said. “Because (students) are multidisciplinary sort of experts in this area.”
Ren said there is room to add technological advancements like computing and machine learning to streamline the creation of pharmaceutical drugs.
“If you have that bigger vision,” Ren said. “It will lead to better scientists for the future.”
