December faculty and staff features 2014

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Jürgen Venitz, M.D., Ph.D., professor, Department of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmacy

Jürgen Venitz, M.D., Ph.D.
Jürgen Venitz, M.D., Ph.D.

Venitz has been named chairman of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee. Venitz will helm the 14-member committee through September 2018.

The Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee provides advice on scientific, technical and medical issues concerning drug compounding under sections 503A and 503B of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and, as required, any other product for which the FDA has regulatory responsibility. The committee also makes recommendations to the commissioner of food and drugs.

Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee members are authorities in the fields of pharmaceutical compounding, manufacturing and regulation; pharmacy; and medicine. More than 100 people were nominated for the 14 committee positions. Of those selected, 12 are voting members and two are non-voting.

“Jürgen Venitz has done past service with FDA for a number of years within its clinical pharmacology advisory committees,” said Peter Byron, Ph.D., chairman of the School of Pharmacy’s Department of Pharmaceutics. “He is known well within the VCU School of Pharmacy and our School of Medicine for his broad knowledge and prudent advice on matters at the interface of medicine, pharmaceutical products and the patient. As the vice chairman of the Department of Pharmaceutics, this additional role within FDA’s advisory committees fits Jürgen perfectly. The future of compounding regulation is in safe hands for a few more years.”

Venitz, who holds a Ph.D. in physiology as well as an M.D., has twice been recognized by the FDA for distinguished service to its Advisory Committee for Pharmaceutical Science and Clinical Pharmacology. He has a joint appointment with the School of Pharmacy’s Department of Pharmaceutics and Department of Medicinal Chemistry and directs the school’s Pharmacokinetic-Pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) Research Laboratory.

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James McCullough Jr., Ph.D., distinguished professor of psychology and psychiatry, College of Humanities and Sciences

James P. McCullough Jr., Ph.D.
James P. McCullough Jr., Ph.D.

A new book co-authored by McCullough provides the latest description and update of the Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy – an empirically supported psychotherapy model that McCullough developed during the 1970s for the treatment of chronic depression.

"CBASP as a Distinctive Treatment for Persistent Depressive Disorder," was written by McCullough, along with co-authors Elisabeth Schramm, Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University Medical Centre in Freiburg, Germany, and J. Kim Penberthy, Ph.D., associate professor of research in psychiatric medicine at the University of Virginia Health System.

"The unparalleled problems of the chronically depressed patient are some of the most difficult that clinicians face," according to the publisher's description of the book. "The disorder has usually continued for decades and patients enter psychotherapy interpersonally withdrawn, detached and with little or no motivation to change. 'CBASP as A Distinctive Treatment for Persistent Depressive Disorder' provides an updated look into the phenomenological worldview of the patient and shows the reader why the worldview of the patient is a valid perception of reality. Then, clinicians are shown how to modify the refractory lifestyle."

"CBASP as a Distinctive Treatment for Persistent Depressive Disorder" is the fifth text published by McCullough on the psychotherapy model. The latest is part of a series, CBT Distinctive Features, that requested leading practitioners and theorists of the cognitive behavioral therapies to describe simply and briefly what constituted the main theoretical features and administrative components of their particular approach.