MetrumRG scientists traveled to Orlando, FL to join the American Conference on Pharmacometrics for their 2019 annual meeting in October.

The MetrumRG team had a busy week, hosting workshops, presenting posters, speaking at sessions, and meeting with collaborators. Check out our day by day debrief. We have included links to posters and slides. Remember to scroll to the bottom for photos!

Saturday, October 19

Bill Gillespie, Ph.D. and Curtis Johnston, Pharm.D., kicked things off with a  workshop entitled "Introduction to Bayesian pharmacometric data analysis with NONMEM". This workshop introduced principles and methods of Bayesian data analysis for pharmacometric applications.  This guided hands-on experience in Bayesian data analysis using NONMEM v7.4. included examples focused on population PK and PK/PD models with specific attention to situations when informative prior distributions can be used to reflect pharmacological understanding.  The course covered basic Bayesian and Markov chain Monte Carlo methodology, methods for model evaluation and MCMC convergence, and tips for implementation of models in NONMEM.  The conclusion featured an introduction to fitting Bayesian population PK and PK/PD models with Stan/Torsten. Thank you to our attendees for joining us! Course materials can be found here. 

Sunday, October 20

Sunday provided us with some proud moments as several of our scientists received awards.

Matthew Riggs, Ph.D., was presented with the 2019 ISoP Innovation Award and was also named and ISoP Fellow.

Michael Heathman, M.S.,  was presented with the 2019 ISoP Unsung Hero Award.

An ACoP Quality Award was awarded for the work presented in the poster "Model-based Dose Selection for a GnRH Receptor Antagonist in Endometriosis and Uterine Fibroids (UF) to Reduce Symptoms While Preventing Lumbar Spine Bone Mineral Density (BMD) Loss". The authors included MetrumRG scientists Kyle Baron, Pharm.D, Ph.D., Matthew Riggs, Ph.D., Jonathan French, Sc.D., and Ramon Garcia, Ph.D. Dr. Baron presented the poster and also gave a presentation on this work later in the week.

Marc Gastonguay, Ph.D., gave a presentation titled "Considerations for Assuring Quality Tools and a Proposal for Open Software Development Standards". See slides from this presentation here.

Monday, October 21

Monday featured 2 poster presentations: 

Jia Kang, Ph.D. and Bill Knebel, Pharm.D., Ph.D., contributed to the poster "Population Pharmacokinetic Analysis of Pexidartinib in Healthy Subjects and Patients with Tenosynovial Giant Cell Tumor (TGCT) or Other Solid Tumors". See the poster here.

Ahmed Elmokadem, Ph.D., contributed to the poster "Measurement of stereoselective bupropion disposition in rat brain to support translational PBPK model development and application".

Our scientists also participated in presentations on Monday.

Marc Gastonguay, Ph.D., gave a presentation titled "Considerations and Future Directions for the Development of Open-Source, Public License, Pharmacometric Software". View slides here.

At the Innovation in Communication session, Matthew Riggs, Ph.D., and Eric Jordie, M.S., were part of the winning team "Wicked Lobstah'metricians". A picture from this fun presentation is included below - read on!

Tuesday, October 22

Tuesday we had the following poster presentations:

Kiersten Utley and Ahmed Elmokadem, Ph.D., presented "Impact of Partition Coefficient Prediction Methods on PBPK Model Output Using a Unified Tissue Composition". See the poster.

Wednesday, October 23

Wednesday was a busy day for our scientists.

Jonathan French, Sc.D., co-chaired a session which featured James Rogers, Ph.D. and Eric Jordie, M.S., titled "You Say To-MAY-to, I Say To-MAH-to What Statisticians Wish Pharmacometricians Understood (About Statistics)".

Our scientists also had poster presentations:

Xiaoning (Shelly) Wang, Ph.D., contributed to the poster "Characterizing Impact of Interoccasion Variability in Dasatinib Exposure on Efficacy in Chronic Phase Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CP-CML) Patients".

Jonathan French, Sc.D., presented "Exposure-Response Analysis of Efficacy and Safety for Pexidartinib in Patients with Tenosynovial Giant Cell Tumor (TGCT)". Daniel Polhamus, Ph.D., was also a contributing author on this poster which you can view here.

Eric Jordie, M.S., presented "A Semi-physiological Population Pharmacokinetic Model Developed Using Clinical Dose Escalation and Dose Confirmation Data for an Oral Fixed-Dose Combination of CDA Inhibitor Cedazuridine with Decitabine (ASTX727) in Subjects with Myelodysplastic Syndromes". Poster can be found here.

Thursday, October 24

The day began with presentations: 

Kyle Baron, Pharm.D, Ph.D., co-presented a student/trainee even titled "Quantitative Systems Pharmacology in Translational Drug Development".

Jonathan French, Sc.D., presented "The confluence of Statistical and Pharmacometric Approaches for Benefit Risk Analysis: a case study using Bayesian joint models for safety and efficacy" and participated as a panelist during the tutorial. Slides from the presentation can be found here.

Bill Gillespie, Ph.D. and Marc Gastonguay, Ph.D., gave a presentation "A completely open-source pharmacometrics tool set: Moving from vision to reality with R, mrgsolve and Stan/Torsten" as part of the tutorial entitled "Pharmacometrics Goes Open-Source." Slides from this presentation can be found here. 

Thursday afternoon, we kicked off our workshop "Simulation Concepts and their Application to Model-Informed Drug Development" led by Kyle Baron, Pharm.D, Ph.D., Michael Heathman, M.S., and Marc Gastonguay, Ph.D. This one and half day hands-on workshop provided participants with a foundation for applying simulation to decision-making in the drug development process. The workshop began with a discussion of how to translate key questions into quantitative decision criteria, suitable to be addressed through simulation. This was followed by an introduction to mrgsolve, an open-source platform for simulation in R (https://mrgsolve.github.io), and a discussion of fundamental simulation concepts, such as how to implement uncertainty and variability to produce appropriate simulation output. Finally, the workshop wrapped up with hands-on case studies in mrgsolve, allowing the students to implement what they’ve learned. Course materials can be found here.

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!