What We Are
What is Pharmacology?
Pharmacology can be broadly defined as the study of how chemical agents affect living processes. These chemical agents include natural substances, such as hormones, neurotransmitters, growth factors, and local autocrine factors, as well as drugs and toxic agents in the environment. Thus, by definition, pharmacology is a very broad-based discipline. Indeed, the Department of Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center embraces this broad definition. The breadth of our scientific environment is manifest by faculty who study the fate of drugs once ingested and the variability of drug response in varying patient populations (a discipline known as pharmacokinetics), as well as faculty who study the mechanisms by which drugs as well as endogenous agents work (a discipline known as pharmacodynamics), with the intention that detailed molecular insights concerning the mechanism of action of endogenous hormones, neurotransmitters, growth factors or autocoids ultimately will lead to the discovery of novel drug targets for therapeutic intervention in diseases where distal steps in signal transduction have gone awry. A strength in our research and training environment is that Vanderbilt University has a world-acclaimed Division of Clinical Pharmacology, which links the Department of Medicine with the Department of Pharmacology. Faculty members in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology focus on human disease and clinical enigmas as the origin of their questions for research. Basic scientists who pursue their inquiries in this environment are continually informed by their colleagues of the pathophysiological and potential therapeutic relevance that can be achieved by appropriate focus of their efforts.
The discipline of Pharmacology has considerable overlap with many aspects of physiology, biochemistry, immunology, cell biology, molecular biology, neurobiology, psychology, microbiology, chemistry, and medicine. Pharmacology is more, however, than just combined components of several disciplines. It also has its own paradigms which, in conjunction with concepts borrowed from many other fields, explain drug action. The intention of our graduate program is, and has been for more than 20 years, to provide a broad understanding of all of the elements of biomedical research with particular attention to the precepts, scientific questions, and experimental strategies central to pharmacological research.
