The Skaggs School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences

Shirley M. Tsunoda

Dr. Shirley Tsunoda received her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychobiology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1987, and her Doctorate degree in Pharmacy from the University of California, San Francisco in 1992. She completed her residency in Pharmacy Practice in 1993 at the University of California, San Francisco and was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Pharmacokinetics/Drug Metabolism with Leslie Z. Benet, Ph.D., in the Department of Biopharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco from 1993-1995. She then joined the faculty at the Bouvé College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at Northeastern University in Boston, MA from 1995-2000 where she developed a research program investigating factors influencing the variability of cytochrome P450 3A and taught courses in Clinical Immunology and Therapeutics. She also developed a clinical practice in solid organ transplantation at New England Medical Center where she was a member of the transplant team, teaching medical and pharmacy students and surgical and pharmacy residents. She also held a faculty appointment in the School of Medicine at Tufts University. From 2000-2002, Dr. Tsunoda was a clinical pharmacist in solid organ transplantation at the University of Washington in Seattle and held a faculty appointment in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Washington. More recently, she was the Research Subject Advocate at the General Clinical Research Center at the University of California San Francisco.

Currently, at SSPPS, Dr. Tsunoda chairs and lectures in the Therapeutics series of courses in the third professional year. In addition, she is the Principal Investigator of the statewide UCSF Partners in D grant and sees patients in the Liver Transplant/Hepatology clinic at the UCSD Perlman Ambulatory Care Center in La Jolla.

Research Interests

Her research focus and specialty is in Drug Metabolism/Pharmacokinetics: investigating factors that influence the activity and variability of intestinal and hepatically-mediated metabolism. Her clinical specialty is in solid organ transplantation.

Selected Publications

Harris RZ, Tsunoda SM, Mroczkowski PJ, Wong H, Benet LZ. The effects of menopause and hormone replacement therapies on the pharmacokinetics of prednisolone and erythromycin. Clin Pharmacol Ther 1996; 59:429-35.

Tsunoda SM, Harris RZ, Mroczkowski PJ, Benet LZ. A preliminary evaluation of progestins as inducers of cytochrome P450 3A4 activity in post-menopausal women. J Clin Pharmacol 1998; 38:1137-43.

Aweeka FT, Jacobson MA, Martin-Munley S, Hedman A, Schoenfeld P, Omachi R, Tsunoda S, Gambertoglio JG. Effect of renal disease and hemodialysis on foscarnet pharmacokinetics and dosing recommendations. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr Hum Retrovirol 1999; 20:350-7.

Tsunoda SM, Velez, RL, von Moltke LL, Greenblatt DJ. Differentiation of intestinal and hepatic cytochrome P450 3A4 activity with use of midazolam as an in vivo probe: Effect of ketoconazole. Clin Pharmacol Ther 1999; 66:461-71.

Freeman R, Tsunoda S, Supran S, Warshaw A, Smith J, Fairchild R, Pratt D, Rohrer R. Direct costs for one year of liver transplant care are directly associated with disease severity at transplant. Transplant Proc 2001; 33:1436-7.

Tsunoda SM, Harris RZ, Christians U, Velez RL, Freeman RB, Benet LZ, Warshaw A. Red wine decreases cyclosporine bioavailability. Clin Pharmacol Ther 2001; 70:462-7.

Kim JS, Nafziger AN, Tsunoda SM, Choo EF, Streetman DS, Kashuba ADM, Rocci AL, Kulawy RW, Beck DJ, Wilkinson GR, Greenblatt DJ, and Bertino JS. Limited plasma sampling to predict AUC of the CYP3A phenotyping probe midazolam in adults: application to various assay techniques. J Clin Pharmacol 2002; 42:1-7.

List of Publications in Pub Med