October 12, 1999
Contact: John Scarffe, KU Endowment, (785) 832-7336.
LAWRENCE - A $25,000 gift from CyDex Inc. of Overland Park will fund a new pharmaceutical chemistry fellowship at the University of Kansas School of Pharmacy, Dean Jack Fincham announced today.
The CyDex gift, initiated by company founder, president and KU graduate Peter T. Higuchi, has established the Howard E. Mossberg Predoctoral Fellowship Fund at the Kansas University Endowment Association. The fellowship will go to a doctoral candidate in pharmaceutical chemistry doing research under the direction of Professor Valentino Stella, director of the Center for Drug Delivery Research, and his successors.
Mossberg retired from KU as a special counselor to the chancellor in 1998 after previous service as vice chancellor for research, graduate studies and public service, and dean of the School of Pharmacy.
"This gift from CyDex Inc. is greatly welcome," Fincham said. "It will enable deserving students to continue the research and study that is so important to the future of the field of pharmacy. We are most grateful."
CyDex works with domestic and international pharmaceutical companies to license and make commercially viable a technology developed by scientists at the KU Higuchi Biosciences Center for Drug Delivery Research. This technology, a series of charged sulfobutyl Ether Beta Cyclodextrins, is commercially known as Captisol (R). Captisol can improve the solubility of some compounds.
Peter Higuchi received a KU political science degree in 1979. Before founding CyDex, he worked at Touche Ross & Co. in Los Angeles, at Marion Merrell Dow, and at his own consulting business, Higuchi & Co. His father, the late Takeru Higuchi, is the scientist and KU distinguished professor for whom KU's Higuchi Biosciences Center was named.
The KU Endowment Association is an independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fund-raising and fund-management foundation for the University of Kansas. Founded in 1891, the KU Endowment Association is the oldest foundation of its kind at a public university in the United States and one of the largest.
Story by Lynn Humphrey