PHARMACOKINETICS AS DETECTIVES – How pharmaceutical industry uses PK concepts to maximize success in discovering and developing new drugs

Date & Time

Monday, 8 April 2019
8.30 am – 4.30 pm

Venue

Pharmacy Practice Skills Hub
S4 Level 2
Department of Pharmacy
National University of Singapore

Highlights

Do you want to know what are the key decisions made during the major drug discovery and development milestones, or how the scientists in the industry uses PK (and PD) concepts to make these challenging decisions to bring medicines to patients successfully and quickly? Through this course, participants will be given an insider view of the practical applications of PK (and PD) concepts in decision making during Pharmaceutical R&D process, with many examples of realistic industrial scenarios.

This one-day workshop is the first of a series of potentially more workshops covering industrial application of PK and PD in drug discovery and development. Each workshop contains instructor-led lectures mixed in with many realistic examples of industrial scenarios, and activities. Significant emphasis will be placed on interactive hand-on activities to simulate decision making (e.g. which candidate to select, what data do you want to “buy” in what sequence with your limited budget and time frame), while carefully balancing between theories and applications to encourage holistic and integrated thinking. At the end of the workshop, participants have the opportunity to attempt a quiz to self-assess their understanding on what was delivered in the workshop.

Maximum class size is limited to 25, ideally with a mix of participants of different background, to facilitate the interactive nature of the curriculum.

Workshop Contents

• Review basic PK concepts and how to use these concepts to design better studies.
• Understand the physiological and anatomical basis of PK properties and use these to understand why certain drugs have bad PK profiles. Learn strategies to dissect the data in order to identify the root-cause of PK problems (and suggest ways to fix them).
• Introduction to in-vitro and in-silico (QSAR) screening and their use to guide direction of medicinal chemistry and how to design effective screening strategy using appropriate combination of in-vitro, in-silico and in-vivo assays.
• Simulation exercise: Apply all the concepts learned in simulated lead-optimization and candidate selection exercises. See if you can help your project team identify the cause(s) behind the drugs with “bad” PK profiles, or pick the right molecule(s) to progress into human studies with the least amount of data and/or time.