Dean Deanna Kroetz '85 elected to National Academy of Medicine
By Emily Caldwell, Ohio State News
Deanna Kroetz, PhD, BS Pharm '85, dean of the College of Pharmacy at The Ohio State University, has been elected to the 2025 class of inductees to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine.
Dean Kroetz, also a professor of pharmaceutics and pharmacology at Ohio State, was recognized by the academy for her scientific contributions in pharmacogenetics – among them, identifying genetic markers that predict drug toxicity in patients – and for her exceptional mentorship and academic leadership.
“Mentoring has always been a key component of what I do, because I have always been involved in graduate education,” she said. “I’ve considered job No. 1, when you’re on the research faculty, is to train the next generation of scientists.”
The NAM was founded in 1970 as the Institute of Medicine and is one of three academies that make up the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in the United States. The academies are private, nonprofit institutions that work outside of government to provide objective advice on matters of science, technology and health.
“The National Academy of Medicine has been instrumental in shaping U.S. and global policy around the promotion of health for decades. I’m thrilled to congratulate Dr. Kroetz on her election to this prestigious and dedicated community of scholars,” said John M. Horack, vice president for research at Ohio State.
With her background in both the pharmacy profession and the science around drug development, Dean Kroetz looks forward to engaging in national conversations about the health sciences as a new member of the NAM.
“I’m very honored and really humbled to be elected,” Dean Kroetz said. “And I do want to take it as an opportunity to be involved where I can, and to promote the profession, making sure pharmacy and all of the health sciences have a voice at the table.”
Dean Kroetz describes her research program as “bedside to bench,” taking human tissue samples to the lab to investigate the molecular mechanisms behind problems physicians see in the clinic.
Her initial genetics research focused on a family of proteins called ABC transporters that perceive drugs as unfamiliar molecules and pump them away from tumors and other disease targets, limiting the drug’s effectiveness and exposing sensitive surrounding tissue to toxic compounds. She and colleagues explored genes that regulated the transporters’ functions with the aim of designing agents that could block their activity.
Among the toxicities associated with ABC transporters is their role in chemotherapy-induced sensory peripheral neuropathy, which causes pain, numbness, tingling or burning in the hands and feet, loss of function in the fingers and increased temperature sensitivity. A primary focus of Dean Kroetz’s lab in recent years has included genome-wide association studies to identify genes that contribute to individuals’ increased risk for this toxic side effect and molecular studies to understand how these genes are involved in the neurotoxicity.
These investigations advanced from the earliest days of human genetics to the rapid genomic sequencing available today through the Pharmacogenetics Research Network funded by the National Institutes of Health for 15 years, Dean Kroetz said.
“Multiple centers were working on pharmacogenetics and every group across the country was working on a specific class of drugs. We got together several times a year to share resources and help each other,” she said. “This never would have happened without the NIH umbrella funding across these groups.”
She is a rare example of a pharmacy scholar in academia, combining training as a practicing pharmacist with a scientific doctoral degree and research-heavy career exploring molecular mechanisms behind drugs’ therapeutic – and potentially toxic – effects and how the human body responds to both.
“I’m still keeping my lab going, but I also wear a different hat. I see pharmacy both from the profession side and the research side, both of which are really equally important,” she said. “So this is an opportunity to help give back to the profession as well.”
Dean Kroetz earned a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy at Ohio State and a PhD in pharmaceutics at the University of Washington, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Cancer Institute Laboratory of Carcinogenesis.
She was appointed dean of Ohio State’s College of Pharmacy in 2023 after spending the previous 30 years at the University of California, San Francisco, as a faculty member and eventually chair of the School of Pharmacy Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences.
Dean Kroetz has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2018), the American Heart Association (2002) and the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (2008). She has also received mentoring awards from numerous professional societies.
The academy elected 90 regular members and 10 international members during its annual meeting. The newly elected members bring NAM’s total membership to more than 2,500, which includes more than 200 international members. New members are elected by current members through a process that recognizes individuals who have made major contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, health care and public health.
Dean Kroetz is one of 10 current Ohio State faculty members who have been elected to the NAM.