Facts About the Department of Pharmacology

History of the Department

The formal establishment of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Minnesota was preceded by the establishment of the College of Medicine and Surgery in 1888. At that time, Dr. H. M. Bracken was appointed professor of materia medica and therapeutics. Materia medica and therapeutics was the forerunner of pharmacology in medical schools all over the world. Pharmacology as a medical school discipline came into being only 30 years earlier in Germany and had not yet been introduced into American medical schools.

A department of pharmacology at the University of Minnesota was approved in 1906, but not established until 1913. Before 1913, pharmacology, the study of how chemicals (drugs) interact with the systems of the body, was a specialty within the field of physiology. In 1913, the Department of Pharmacology was established, with Dr. Arthur Hirschfelder appointed as professor and as the first head of the department. He served as department head until 1942. Dr. Raymond Bieter served as head from 1942 to 1962, and Dr. Frederick E. Shideman served as head from 1962 to 1989. Since 1989, Dr. Horace H. Loh has been the head of the Department of Pharmacology.

The Department of Pharmacology was initially located in the "old" Millard Hall. The "new" Millard Hall and the Institute of Anatomy (now Jackson Hall) were built in 1912. The department was located in the "new" Millard Hall for many years. In 1996, Nils Hasselmo Hall was built (originally called Basic Sciences/Biomedical Engineering Building) and the majority of the pharmacology faculty moved into offices and laboratories in that building. In 1998, Millard Hall was demolished and Jackson Hall was renovated. The department's administrative offices moved into the 6th floor of Jackson Hall (its present location) in 1999. Currently, the laboratories of the pharmacology faculty are located in 3 buildings: Nils Hasselmo Hall, Jackson Hall, and Moos Tower.

The Mission of the Department

The mission of the Department of Pharmacology is to provide quality educational programs related to the discipline, to conduct research that serves to advance the fundamental knowledge of drug action ranging from molecular mechanisms to clinical applications, and to serve as a source for basic and clinical pharmacologic expertise for the Medical School, the University, and local, national and international communities.

Graduate Program within the Department

When the Department of Pharmacology was formed in 1913, the Medical School offered 30 three-year teaching fellowships with stipend, to be given to students studying for the doctor of philosophy degree in the medical sciences. By the mid-1920s, pharmacology had two of these fellowships. They were awarded to individuals who wished to become research workers and remain in academic medicine. The first MS degrees were awarded in 1921 to Herman Jensen and John Quigley and the first Ph.D. was awarded in 1924 to Herman Jensen (thesis title: An Experimental Study of Certain Benzyl Compounds with Special Attention to the Importance of Substitution in the Benzyl Nucleus and the Significance of the Side Chains). Since the initial awarding of the degree, the Department of Pharmacology has conferred 302 Ph.D. degrees and 51 MS degrees, with most the graduates continue their careers either in academics or industrial pharmacology research. Among the notable graduates, Dr. Louis Ignarro, class of 1966, received the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his pioneering work on demonstrating that nitric oxide, NO, is the gaseous second messenger serving as a vasodilator, which is the principle behind important pharmaceutical agents such as nitroglycerin, minoxidil, and sildenafil citrate (generally known under the trade name Viagra).

State of the Department

Currently, the Department of Pharmacology resides in approximately 40,000 sq. ft. of laboratory space. The department remains one of the top-rated pharmacology departments in the country, with annual research funding of over $9.3 million. The 47 interdisciplinary graduate faculty consist of pharmacologists, biochemists, cell and molecular biologists, cancer biologists, and neuroscientists, drawn from the Department of Pharmacology, as well as other departments within the Medical School and the Academic Health Center. In addition to participating in teaching pharmacology to professional students in the Medical School, College of Pharmacy and School of Dentistry, the graduate faculty are also involved in mentoring pharmacology graduate students.

The graduate program is primarily structured as a Ph.D. program; however, the department also offers a MS degree and participates in the MD/PhD Program and the Joint Degree (PhD/JD) Program in Law, Health and Life Sciences. Currently, 47 students are enrolled in our graduate program, conducting research on molecular and cellular mechanism of drug actions. Most of our PhD students complete their coursework and graduation requirements within 5 1/2 years, and they are financially supported either by predoctoral fellowships, by two training grants that the graduate faculty are involved in, or by individual research grants of the mentors. Graduates of the program typically accept postdoctoral positions at major research universities or industrial positions in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.