Jusko receives $2.9 million MIRA Award from the National Institutes of Health

The Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) program of the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) seeks “to increase the efficiency of NIH funding by providing investigators with greater stability and flexibility, thereby enhancing scientific productivity and the chances for important breakthroughs.”

This award extends three areas of his ongoing scholarly research. One goal seeks increased understanding of pharmacokinetics and mechanisms of corticosteroid effects on genomic and physiologic processes associated with endocrine, metabolic and pharmacologic responses from local to systems levels.

A second aim advances understanding of mechanisms of drug effects and their interactions in signaling pathways that are normal and deranged in pancreatic cancer with advanced mathematical models.

The third goal continues development of pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic, pharmacogenomics and disease models that reveal the “rules of biology” at various levels of biological organization (systems pharmacology), and allows improved quantitation and prediction of complex drug effects.

Collaborators in this research include Debra DuBois, adjunct research professor of biological sciences, and Richard Almon, professor of biological sciences, both at the University at Buffalo, and Ioannis Androulakis, professor of biological engineering at Rutgers University.

Jusko has received numerous professional awards for his research including the Oscar B. Hunter Therapeutics Award in March 2018 from the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. The Web of Science lists an h-index of 69 for his published work.