Shirley M. Tsunoda, PharmD
Assistant Clinical Professor
University of California, San Diego, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Shirley M. Tsunoda, PharmD, is an assistant clinical professor in the UCSD Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and a partner school principal investigator of the grant funding the Partners in D program.
Dr. Tsunoda’s clinical expertise is in solid organ transplantation. Her research focus is on factors influencing the variability of drug metabolizing enzymes in the intestine and liver. She currently chairs the therapeutics course for the second-year student pharmacists.
Dr. Tsunoda was an assistant professor of pharmacy at the Bouvé College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at Northeastern University in Boston where she developed a research program focusing on the factors that influence the variability of the cytochrome P450 enzyme system, created a solid organ transplant pharmacy service at New England Medical Center, and taught courses to pharmacy students. After leaving Boston, Dr. Tsunoda went to the University of Washington in Seattle where she worked as a clinical pharmacist on the solid organ transplant service and had an academic appointment in the School of Pharmacy. She then accepted a position as the research subject advocate for the General Clinical Research Center at UCSF based at San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center where she gained experience in maintaining integrity and patient safety for the clinical protocols conducted in the GCRC.
Dr. Tsunoda earned a Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of California, San Francisco. She completed a pharmacy practice residency at UCSF and then went on to complete a two-year post-doctoral research fellowship at UCSF in the laboratory of Leslie Z. Benet, PhD in pharmacokinetics/drug metabolism. Dr. Tsunoda joined the faculty at UCSD in 2006.