April 2, 2015

Pharmacogenomics expert set for Wilkinson Lecture

Mary Relling, Pharm.D., chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, will deliver this year’s Grant R. Wilkinson Distinguished Lecture in Clinical Pharmacology on Thursday, April 9.

Mary Relling, Pharm.D., chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, will deliver this year’s Grant R. Wilkinson Distinguished Lecture in Clinical Pharmacology on Thursday, April 9.

Mary Relling, Pharm.D.

Relling studies genomic variations that can affect how individual patients respond to cancer chemotherapy, with the aim of improving the treatment of childhood leukemia. Her lecture, “Pharmacogenetics of Leukemia Therapy: Discovery to Implementation,” will begin at 8 a.m. in 208 Light Hall.

A graduate of the University of Arizona and the University of Utah College of Pharmacy, Relling is the author of more than 300 scientific publications.

She is one of the principal investigators, along with Vanderbilt University’s Dan Roden, M.D., of the Pharmacogenomics Research Network, which is supported by the National Institutes of Health, and co-founder of the Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium.

Relling was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies in 2009.

The endowed Wilkinson lectureship is named for the late Grant R. Wilkinson, Ph.D., D.Sc., a distinguished Vanderbilt clinical pharmacologist.

Relling’s lecture is sponsored by the Division of Clinical Pharmacology, Department of Pharmacology and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.