Faculty & Staff Details

	Name:	Reza Mehvar
	Position:	Professor
	Email:	reza.mehvar@ttuhsc.edu
	Bio	Dr. Mehvar received his Pharm.D. degree (1979) from the University of Tehran College of Pharmacy (Tehran, Iran) and his Ph.D. (1988) in Pharmacokinetics from the University of Alberta Faculty of Pharmacy (Edmonton, Canada). In 1988, Dr. Mehvar joined Drake University College of Pharmacy in Des Moines, IA (USA) as an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutics where he was eventually promoted to Professor of Pharmaceutics prior to joining Texas Tech School of Pharmacy in 1999. During his academic career, Dr. Mehvar has taught undergraduate and graduate pharmacokinetics courses and conducted research in the areas of pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, hepatobiliary disposition of xenobiotics, and pharmacokinetic-based targeted drug delivery approaches. He has received several awards, including Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center President’s Award and Texas Tech University System Chancellor’s Award, for both his teaching and research accomplishments.

Education:

Research Interests:

Laboratory Research: Throughout his career, the main focus of Dr. Mehvar’s research has been the organ liver, including both studies of the role of the liver in drug disposition and the pharmacological approaches to treat liver diseases. Earlier work in Dr. Mehvar’s laboratory focused on the stereoselective pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics and analysis of chiral drugs, with a particular emphasis on the effects of rate of entry of racemic drugs into the portal vein on the ratio of the blood concentrations of the enantiomers. More recently, his laboratory has focused on the inflammatory mediators, such as cytokines and nitric oxide, affecting drug transport and P450-mediated drug metabolism by the liver. As for liver diseases, the focus has been reduction of rejection in liver transplantation and attenuation of cold and warm hepatic ischemia-reperfusion injury. Dr. Mehvar’s group has studied the kinetics of macromolecules with regard to their potential for targeted delivery of immunosuppressants to the liver for the purpose of local immunosuppression. Organ- and/or cell-specific delivery of immunosuppressants is advantageous because it reduces the exposure of other tissues to the drug, and, therefore, reduces the toxic effects of these agents. Additionally, the sustained effects of the macromolecular prodrugs of anti-inflammatory agents may be useful for reduction of ischemia-reperfusion damage associated with the current methods of organ preservation outside the body before transplantation. Most commonly used techniques in Dr. Mehvar’s laboratory include HPLC and pharmacokinetic studies in whole animals (e.g., rats) or humans and in animal organs (e.g. isolated perfused rat liver) and cells (e.g. hepatocytes and other liver-derived cells).

Dr. Mehvar received Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center President’s Excellence in Research Award in 2008 for his research accomplishments.
Educational Research: Dr. Mehvar is interested, conducts research, and publishes in the following areas: ability-based, outcome driven learning approaches; development of online tools for learning pharmacokinetics; outcome assessment strategies; and curricular development and mapping.

On three occasions, Dr. Mehvar has received Innovation in Teaching Award (1997 and 2000) and Honorable Mention (1999) from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy for his work on the development of learning tools in pharmacokinetics. Additionally, he has received multiple teaching awards per year from Pharm.D. and/or Graduate students for every year that he has been at TTUHSC School of Pharmacy. He has also been the recipient of the TTUHSC President’s Excellence in Teaching Award (2004) and TTU System Chancellor’s Council Distinguished Teaching Award (2004).

Publications:

Please Click here to view a partial list of research articles indexed in PubMed.

Please click here to view a list of Educational Research publications (Most are not listed in PubMed).