Dr. Shirley M. Tsunoda, Pharm.D., FSSP
Professor of Clinical Pharmacy
Associate Dean for Pharmacy Education
Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Pronouns: She|Her|Hers
Dr. Tsunoda’s research focuses on using metabolomics to investigate factors influencing the variability of drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics. Her group is interested in the intersection of drugs and the gut microbiome – pharmacomicrobiomics. She is one of the Principal Investigators of the UCSD Center of Excellence in Therapeutics for MPRINT (Maternal and Pediatric Precision in Therapeutics) Hub where she is investigating the impact of antibiotic exposure through breastfeeding on the infant microbiome, metabolome, and development. Previous work has included investigating the impact of altering the gut microbiome with antibiotics on drug metabolizing activity and using probe compounds such as midazolam and cyclosporine to predict activity of CYP3A4, the major drug metabolizing enzyme in the intestine and liver, as well as clinical pharmacology investigations with immunosuppressive agents. Her group is also investigating the use of noninvasive techniques to monitor drugs and other chemicals in pregnancy, infancy, and healthcare workers.
Dr. Tsunoda has several ongoing research projects in: 1) investigating the bidirectional effect of the microbiome on tacrolimus exposure; 2) addressing the impact of xenobiotics such as antidepressants and antibiotics on the human milk metabolome and microbiome; 3) analyzing skin swab metabolomics for drug and environmental exposure; 3) clinical pharmacology studies with immunosuppressive drugs in transplant patients.
Education: B.S. in Psychobiology (1987), UCLA; Pharm.D. (1992) UCSF; Residency in Pharmacy Practice (1993) UCSF; Post-doctoral Fellowship in Pharmacokinetics/Drug Metabolism (1995) UCSF.
Awards and Honors: UCSF Resident Research Project Award (1993); American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy New Investigator Award (1996); National Center for Leadership in Academic Medicine, UCSD (2007); American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics Member of the Month (2011); American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics Dedicated Member (2012); American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy Teacher of the Year (2016) ; UC San Diego Faculty Leadership Academy (2020); UC San Diego SSPPS Faculty Member of the Year, P3 class (2020), Fellow, American College of Clinical Pharmacy (2022), Outstanding Teaching Distinction, SSPPS (2024)
Leadership Experience: Associate: Dean for Pharmacy Education, Health Sciences Faculty Council Member at Large, Human Milk Institute Faculty
- Therapeutics
- Principles of Pharmacology and Physiology
- Pharmacogenomics
- Hepatitis and Solid Organ Transplant Electives
Clinical Practice
- Dr. Tsunoda maintains a clinical practice in the liver transplant clinic at UC San Diego
- Investigation of the impact of the gut microbiome on drug metabolism
- Determining impact of xenobiotics on the human milk metabolome and microbiome
- Differentiation of intestinal and hepatic CYP3A4 activity using midazolam as an in vivo probe
- Characterization of drugs in non-invasive skin swab samples
- Tsunoda SM, et. al (2001) Red wine decreases cyclosporine bioavailability. Clin Pharmacol Ther 70:462-7.
- Momper JD, Tsunoda SM, Ma JD. (2016) Evaluation of proposed in vivo probe substrates and inhibitors for phenotyping transporter activity in humans. J Clin Pharmacol 56 (Suppl 7):S82-98.
- Yang J, et. al (2019) Midazolam limited sampling strategy with a population pharmacokinetic approach to simultaneously estimate cytochrome P450 (CYP) 3A constitutive, inhibition, and induction/activation conditions in healthy adults. J Clin Pharmacol 59(11):1495-1504.
- Jarmusch AK, et. al (2019) Initial development toward non-invasive drug monitoring via untargeted mass spectrometric analysis of human skin. Anal Chem, DOI:10.1021/acs.analchem.8b05854.
- Deininger KM, et. al (2019) Stakeholder perspectives of the clinical utility of pharmacogenomic testing in solid organ transplantation. Pharmacogenomics. 20(18):1291-1302.
- Jarmusch AK, et. al (2020) Enhanced characterization of drug metabolism and the influence of the intestinal microbiome: a pharmacokinetic, microbiome, and untargeted metabolomics study. Clin Transl Sci.
- Deininger KM, et. al (2020) National survey of physicians’ perspectives on pharmacogenetic testing in solid organ transplantation. Clin Transplant.
- Tsunoda SM, et al (2021) Contribution of the gut microbiome to drug disposition, pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic variability. Clin Pharmacokinet, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40262-021-01032-y
- Bittremieux W, et al (2021). Physicochemical and pharmacokinetic properties determining drug detection in skin. Clin Transl Sci https://doi.org/10.1111/cts.13198
- Panitchpakdi M, et al. (2022) Non-invasive skin sampling detects systemically administered drugs in humans. PLOS One https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271794
- Thomas S, et al (2022) An untargeted metabolomics analysis of exogenous chemicals in human milk and transfer to the infant. Clin Transl Sci https://doi.org/10.1111/cts.13393
- Thompson S^, Abelyan S^, Panitchpakdi M, Zemlin J, Thomas SP^, Zhao HN^, Dorrestein PC, Tsunoda SM. Non-invasive skin swab analysis detects environmental drug exposure in pharmacy staff. Clin Transl Sci 2024 17(2):e70022doi: 10.1111/cts.70022
- Clinical and translational investigations of the bidirectional effect of the gut microbiome and medications
- Investigations on xenobiotics and environmental chemicals on human milk composition
- Utility of noninvasive skin swabs in drug monitoring
- Pharmacokinetic and drug metabolism studies in liver disease and liver transplantation