MetrumRG scientists traveled to Stockholm, Sweden to join the Population Approach Group in Europe for their 2019 annual meeting in June.

MetrumRG provided two workshops and presented three posters!

Monday, June 10 and Tuesday, June 11

Devin Pastoor, Ph.D., kicked things off with a two day workshop titled "Building Simulation-based Applications using R shiny and mrgsolve". This two day workshop included a guided hands-on experience in the use of the R package mrgsolve (https://mrgsolve.github.io). mrgsolve is a free, open source, validated R package to facilitate simulation from hierarchical, ODE-based PK/PD and systems pharmacology models frequently employed in pharmaceutical research and development programs. We also introduced the shiny framework, building on the modeling techniques learned in day one to develop a number of dashboards and applications that allow the modeling results to be controlled and visualized through interactive user interfaces.  Thank you to our attendees for joining us! 

Thursday, June 13

Thursday was a busy day for our scientists who presented the following posters:

Matthew Riggs, Ph.D., presented "M-EASE-1: A Modelling and simulation study conducted to further characterize the efficacy of low-dose Empagliflozin as Adjunctive to inSulin thErapy (M-EASE) in Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus".  Abstract III-02.

Bill Gillespie, Ph.D., presented "Torsten: Stan functions for pharmacometric applications. New functionality including within chain parallel computation" in the afternoon. Abstract IV-29.

Curtis Johnston, Pharm.D., presented "M-EASE-2: A Modelling and simulation study conducted to further characterize the efficacy of low-dose Empagliflozin as Adjunctive to inSulin thErapy (M-EASE) in Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus". Abstract IV-66.

Friday, June 14

Bill Gillespie, Ph.D., capped off the week with an afternoon workshop "Getting Started with Bayesian PKPD Modeling Using Stan/Torsten: Practical use of Stan and R for PKPD applications". This hands-on experience covered the advanced use of Stan, rstan and Torsten for Bayesian PKPD modeling. Stan is a flexible open-source software tool for Bayesian data analysis using Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) simulation—a type of MCMC simulation. Torsten is a Stan extension containing a library of functions to simplify implementation of PKPD models. This workshop built on the foundations presented in our previous introductory Stan workshops. Topics included model evaluation and comparison, models with systems of ODEs, optimizing Stan code, using MCMC results for population and trial simulations, and more. Attendees executed Bayesian data analysis examples using Stan and learned to implement population PKPD models including those involving censoring, numerical solution of ODEs, and user-defined probability distributions and likelihoods.

Thank you to our scientists who continue to represent Metrum and share the work we do with our community! Enjoy some pictures from the event!