The concentration in Pharmacology (PCOL) program provides students a gateway to the collaborative opportunities and experiences of the Texas Medical Center's world-class healthcare and scientific community with the academic and laboratory resources of Houston's only Carnegie Institute-designated Tier One public research university.

The faculty includes investigators supported by the National Institutes of Health and other agencies, U.S. and international patents, editorial appointments to the boards of major professional journals, and collaborations with scientists at fellow TMC institutions, including M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Baylor College of Medicine, and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

Our students take an active, hands-on role in research, and have established an impressive track record of being primary or contributing authors of high-impact, peer-reviewed publications, with many receiving travel awards to present their abstracts at national and international conferences. After graduation, our students secure positions in academia, the pharmaceutical industry, public and private research institutions, and within government.

Research areas include cardiovascular, pulmonary, and renal pharmacology, cellular and molecular pharmacology, and neuropharmacology. Specific health applications include cancer, muscle wasting, heart disease, muscular dystrophy, obesity, hypertension, non-compaction cardiomyopathy, Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative disorders, chronic stress and anxiety, atherosclerosis, asthma, diabetes, alcohol misuse, bacterial and fungal infections, drug metabolism and inflammation.

Students have access to advanced laboratory and technologies, including super-resolution confocal microscopy and high content imaging techniques, FRET, NMR, mass spectroscopy, in vivo imaging, animal behavioral measurements, pulmonary and advanced physiological assays in rodents, including transgenic animals.