School of Pharmacy Dean Steve Swanson earns one of science’s highest distinctions, as a 2024 fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

By Nicole Sweeney Etter

University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Pharmacy Dean Steve Swanson is used to nominating faculty and alumni for awards and other honors. Now it is his turn to be recognized for his significant contributions to research and pharmacy education.

Swanson is being honored as a 2024 fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest general scientific society in the world. He was nominated by a former colleague, A. Douglas Kinghorn, the Jack L. Beal Chair in Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy at The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy. Swanson and other newly elected fellows will be recognized at the AAAS Fellows Forum this summer and publicized in the journal Science.

As an AAAS fellow, Swanson joins a long line of distinguished scientists who have been honored by the society since 1874 — an esteemed group that includes the likes of Thomas Edison, Maria Mitchell, W.E.B DuBois, and eight other School of Pharmacy faculty. This year, he’s honored alongside six other UW–Madison faculty members, including School of Pharmacy affiliate Professor Weibo Cai.

“I’m very honored,” Swanson says. “This recognition is important and meaningful not only for me, but also for the School and for the university.”

From the arts to science

Swanson joined the School as dean in 2014 after spending much of his career at University of Illinois at Chicago.

“I got into music first and realized that’s not going to work,” Swanson says with a laugh. Then he felt another calling.

“I just always liked science a lot. I was always very curious, and I was weirdly good with numbers,” says Swanson, who went on to earn his doctorate in pharmacognosy — the study of natural products, such as plants and microorganisms, and their medicinal properties.

“Frankly, I think science is very much like an art in the sense that it’s what people perceive to be important and is influenced by those trends,” he says. “If you look back on the history of science, a lot of the most important questions were not considered important or weren’t even appreciated until later. So I tell assistant professors that you have to be resilient because you’ll be told ‘no,’ or that your ideas are not important, a lot. You have to keep believing in yourself and addressing those questions.”

Advancing drug discovery

While at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Swanson helped explore the medicinal benefits of natural products to identify and develop potential new drug candidates from plant sources.

“I worked with a team of scientists that included people who would go off into the jungle and figure out what plants local medical people used ethnobotanically,” he says. “I would do the biological testing piece to find out what parts had biological activity. And then we had medicinal chemists who would take purified compounds that had biological activity and work on the structure to see if we could change the molecule around to make it more effective and maybe decrease some of the negative side effects. That was really a lot of fun.”

”I tell assistant professors that you have to be resilient because you’ll be told ‘no,’ or that your ideas are not important, a lot. You have to keep believing in yourself and addressing those questions.”
—Steve Swanson

While the work was fascinating, it didn’t reach the clinical trial stage. “That’s why drug discovery is really, really hard,” Swanson says. “But I think there’s going to be a lot that AI can do to help accelerate that part.”

Another focus of Swanson’s research has been on understanding how modulating the growth hormone/IGF-1 axis could sensitize cancer cells to chemotherapy and potentially reduce the toxic side effects of treatment.

“IGF-1 axis is really important,” he says. “It stimulates proliferation and prevents cell death. So IGF-1 is one of those things that can help prevent a cancer cell from getting killed off by many different conventional chemotherapeutic agents.”

In fact, some humans with a mutation that causes disruptions in growth hormone also have low incidence rates of cancer, he notes.

Even as dean of the School of Pharmacy, a largely administrative role, he has teamed up with Professor Paul Marker, chair of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Division, to continue the studies on IGF-1. They are using pegvisomant, an FDA-approved drug used to treat overproduction of growth hormone, to see if it can be effective in treating breast and prostate cancer.

“If we can lower a patient’s IGF-1, maybe we can lower the doses of chemotherapeutic agents,” Swanson says. “I think that would be huge. Chemotherapy is so toxic — lifesaving, but it takes a huge toll on patients in the process. I think one day that we’ll look back and think, ‘Wow, the way we used to treat cancer was medieval.’”

The move to academic leadership

Eventually, Swanson felt drawn to a higher level of leadership and impact.

“When you have a lab, you have your little ship that you’re sailing, and you’re the captain of that ship,” he notes. “When you are leading an entire school, it’s that much more exciting. There’s more going on, there’s more lives that you can impact. There’s more research that you can support and help drive forward. And I love the people I’m working with. It’s just a lot of fun.”

As dean, he has prioritized hiring exceptional faculty and supporting exciting new research initiatives, such as exploring the use of psychedelics for mental health treatment. During his tenure, the School has also launched several new programs, including the nation’s first master’s degree in Psychoactive Pharmaceutical Investigation and an industry-focused master’s degree in Applied Drug Development, as well as multiple new paths in the PharmD program that allow future pharmacists to tailor their education to their career goals.

“The School has really been tremendous. It is truly one of the very best schools of pharmacy in the country, and it’s been an enormous honor to serve the School as dean.”
—Steve Swanson

Swanson is proud of all the School has accomplished, from its research productivity to PharmD students’ high first-time pass rates on the North American Pharmacist Licensure Examination — 96.7% compared to a national average in the mid-70s.

“The School has really been tremendous,” he says. “It is truly one of the very best schools of pharmacy in the country, and it’s been an enormous honor to serve the School as dean.”

Grounded by the creative streak that he fueled first with music and then with science, Swanson — whose office walls are still adorned with guitars — remains optimistic about the future, even in uncertain times.

“In pharmaceutical sciences, I see more opportunities than headwinds, frankly,” Swanson says. “AI is a great area where we can really accelerate drug discovery, and other technologies are growing rapidly. The more tools that we have, the more questions we can ask.”