Patrick McNamara, PhD, FAAPS, FAAAS

Patrick J. McNamara received his PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979.

He joined the faculty at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy in 1980 as an assistant professor. Prior to his appointment as chair of the Division of Pharmaceutical Sciences in January 2003, he served as division director for the Division of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Analysis and for the Division of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, as well as associate dean for Research and Graduate Studies. He currentlly serves as Interim Dean.

Dr. McNamara has a joint appointment in the Graduate Center for Toxicology and is a member of the Markey Cancer Center. He is a Fellow in American Association of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences and serves as a reviewer for numerous journals. Dr. McNamara has served a consultant to a number of pharma-ceutical companies.

Dr. McNamara's scholarly interests are in the area of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, with a particular emphasis on drug transport. Transport proteins play a pivotal role in facilitating movement of drugs across biological membranes. As such, these proteins can dominate the tissue-specific distribution of drugs, altering their cellular pharmaco-kinetics and pharmacodynamics. Trans-porters also may govern the systemic clearance and bioavailability, and thereby, control drug efficacy and toxicity. Dr. McNamara's most recent work has focused on the mechanisms of drug transfer into milk, including transporter gene expression at the blood mammary epithelial barrier. Ongoing research also examines influence of transporters expressed at the blood brain barrier on the penetration of drugs into the CNS. Other projects include modeling the pharmacodynamic of bacterial resistance mechanisms (i.e., up-regulation of efflux transporters and mutations of QRDRs) upon exposure to fluroquinolones. Dr. McNamara's research program utilizes contemporary technology, including cell culture, molecular biology, whole-animal and clinical studies, microdialysis, high-performance liquid chromatography, computer model fitting and simulations.