Pharmacy Matters, Family Matters:

Longtime employee always up for a challenge

Don Stanford (left) signs a column in the addition to the National Center for Natural Products Research.

f the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy is facing a challenge, then you can bet that Don Stanford (BS 77, MS 80) will try to solve it.

“I really enjoy doing anything new or anything challenging,” Stanford said. “I’ll be right in the middle of those projects to try to shepherd things through and make things happen.”

Stanford is assistant director of the pharmacy school’s Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences. He first began working with the school as a senior research technician in 1980, under the direction of Mahmoud ElSohly, who was then doing analytical work for the institute’s marijuana and poison ivy research projects. Stanford first learned about analytical chemistry while working with ElSohly on these projects.

“We kept having these projects pop up that didn’t quite fit in with the SOP,” Stanford said. “Mahmoud was doing a little bit of analytical work outside of the school. There was enough of it that he really wanted to begin a commercial laboratory.”

ElSohly, now director of the school’s federally funded marijuana project, said he enjoyed working with Stanford on research projects.

“I think the world of Don,” ElSohly said. “He is such a resourceful fellow — active, enthusiastic and cooperative as well. I haven’t really seen anyone who can match Don in his many areas of expertise and numerous talents.”

Stanford left the university in 1985 and went to work exclusively with ElSohly as assistant director of his new lab, ElSohly Laboratories Inc. (ELI), on the Square in Oxford.

Memorable is one way to describe Stanford’s early experience at ELI.

“Our good mayor Pat Patterson owned University Sporting Goods downstairs,” he said. “We were upstairs, and we had these big vats of urine. We were manufacturing quality control samples, so you take urine and you spike it with drugs to sell to pharmaceutical companies.

“Anytime there would be a leak — some water coming through or something — Pat Patterson would come up with a baseball bat. He just knew it was something bad. And that building was old. When we first moved in, we only had half of the floor. We shared it with Tom Davis’ insurance office. It was an odd situation.”

From humble beginnings, Stanford helped ElSohly grow ELI into a nationally renowned commercial laboratory with expanded facilities. One factor that led to this expansion was the lab’s accreditation with the National Laboratory Certification Program. Stanford said the process, which allowed the laboratory to conduct federal drug testing, was very comprehensive.

“There is no other certification program as demanding as that one,” he said.

As ELI was becoming certified, ElSohly and Stanford became inspectors for the accreditation program. This allowed them to learn more about best practices for laboratory operations. Eventually, Stanford went out on his own to offer consulting services to labs across the nation, which he did for a few years.

In 1999, however, an opportunity arose that Stanford couldn’t pass up.

“One day, there was a job posting that just sounded like a wonderful fit for me at the School of Pharmacy’s National Center for Natural Products Research,” he said. “I applied for it and was accepted as a research scientist. My title eventually became technical services manager.”

Stanford was charged with working on the center’s larger, emerging projects. One of them included a major pharmaceutical company that was developing a naturally derived tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive component in marijuana, as an active pharmaceutical ingredient. The project was based on a patent developed by ElSohly and his colleague, Samir Ross. The patent was licensed to the company and resulted in a license and supply agreement.

“It was one of the greatest projects we ever had in the NCNPR,” Stanford said. “We supplied the marijuana extract for the company to purify for use as an active pharmaceutical ingredient.”

The process for this was not simple. The center had to register with the Food and Drug Administration as a drug manufacturer, as well as with the Drug Enforcement Administration as a Schedule I drug manufacturer. Stanford helped the center develop the practices, procedures and record keeping needed for selling a botanical ingredient to a pharmaceutical company.

The drug never entered the market, but the partnership was valuable in a number of ways.

“It was a great project while it lasted,” Stanford said. “Producing material for a drug manufacturer developed our capabilities tremendously.”

After that project ended, Stanford became involved in anything that involved technical regulatory compliance and quality assurance. The pharmacy school’s leadership recognized his efforts in these areas, and he was promoted to assistant director of RIPS in July 2013.

“Don has been an integral part of our team for years,” said David D. Allen, the school’s dean. “His talent is impressive on multiple levels. He was a perfect fit for our assistant director of RIPS.”

In his new role, Stanford oversees and directs the school’s infrastructure and research operations. He has organized a team that is responsible for facilities and information technology.

Working with the school’s facilities is much more than managing a few buildings. Stanford’s team is in charge of everything inside them, including their research equipment.

He has been heavily involved in construction of the new research wing of the Thad Cochran Research Center, which will finish the two-building NCNPR complex. The facility will nearly double the school’s available research space and is scheduled to open this year. It will include space for clinical trials, a Biosafety Level 3 lab and a lab for scaling up production of natural products, among other sophisticated features.

“We have to staff it, and we have to equip it,” Stanford said. “We have to commission it as well. We have new capabilities in that building that we’ve never had before, and we’ll need to begin writing grant proposals centered on these things.”

Larry Walker, NCNPR director, said that Stanford is “one in a million.”

“He learns everything from science to culture to music,” Walker said. “In my experience, a lot of people like that are not very organized — they jump from one thing to another. Don is the opposite of that. He is extremely organized and is able to keep projects on task. He understands science, what we’re trying to do from a technical standpoint, and he understands people really well. That combination of things is pretty amazing.”

Perhaps it’s Stanford’s adventurous spirit that propels him to succeed in challenging situations. Outside the School of Pharmacy, he shoots nature photography, has flown hot air balloons and occasionally takes excursions as a certified tree climber.

“I love to do anything outdoors,” he said. “I’ll take any excuse to be outside. I’ve climbed trees that are 200 feet tall. For a while I was going to the annual rendezvous for Tree Climbers International. They held it in different places, in Oregon and Nebraska and Colorado. I would stay a week, and we would camp up in the trees in a ‘tree boat,’ a heavy-duty hammock designed for that.”

Stanford is dogged in his efforts to improve the school in whatever way possible. He noted that the completion of TCRC West Wing will be a milestone in his career.

“All of the things that I’m faced with now can be done with enough funding and enough people,” he said. “We really want to find ways to do things cost-efficiently. The project has been going on for years, and we still have some hurdles to cross. When this thing gets finished, that’s going to be my greatest achievement.”

Allen is well aware of the value of Stanford’s work.

“There are days when I wish I had four Don Stanfords,” Allen said. “If I did, I think I could rule the world.”