The virtual workshop “Mathematical modelling for model-informed drug development and virtual clinical trial” will take place May 1-2, 2023 from 11:30AM – 2PM (MDT – Banff, Edmonton).
The overarching goal of this activity is to expose students and postdocs in the quantitative sciences to innovative research in pharmaceutical applications, particularly model-informed drug development (MIDD) and virtual clinical trials. The focus will be on development of pharmacometrics skills to approach questions centred on drug discovery using a variety of state-of-the-art model-informed drug development (MIDD), including quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) methodologies and in silico (virtual) clinical trials. This is the fifth iteration of a similar workshop focused on quantitative systems pharmacology models in the pharmaceutical industry.
Schedule
All times are listed in MDT (Banff/Calgary)
Monday, May 1
11:30 – 11:40 – Opening Remarks by Organizers
11:40 – 12:25 – Narendra M. Dixit (Indian Institute of Science)
12:25 – 13:10 – Valeriu Damian (GSK)
13:10 – 13:20 – Break
13:20 – 14:00 – Panel Discussion with all speakers ‘Where do we go from here? Challenges and opportunities in MIDD’
Tuesday, May 2
11:30 – 11:40 – Organizers “Advice for young trainees”
11:40 – 12:10 – Jessica Wojciechowski (Pfizer)
12:10 – 12:40 – Jane Knöchel (AstraZeneca)
12:40 – 12:50 – Break
12:50 – 13:20 – Katerina Kaouri (Cardiff University)
13:20 – 13:50 – Massimiliano Germani (GSK)
13:50 – 14:00 – Closing Remarks by Organizers
Speakers
Narendra M. Dixit (Indian Institute of Science)
Narendra M Dixit is Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chair of the Centre for Biosystems Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. He has a B. Tech. from IIT Bombay and an M. S. and a Ph. D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, all in chemical engineering. He did post-doctoral work in theoretical biology and biophysics at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. His research interests are in the computational biology of infectious diseases and microbiomes. He has been a Senior Fellow of the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance.
Jane Knöchel (AstraZeneca)
“A case‐study of model‐informed drug development of a novel PCSK9 anti sense oligonucleotide“
Dr Jane Knöchel is currently a clinical pharmacometrician at AstraZeneca. Dr Knöchel received her Diplom in Mathematics from Humboldt University zu Berlin and completed a PhD in applied mathematics at Potsdam University. For her PhD she received a 3.5 year research followship as part of the PharMetrX program. Currently, she applies her mathematical skills to inform the clinical development of compounds for cardiovascular, renal or metabolic diseases with special focus on NASH.
Katerina Kaouri (Cardiff University)
“Modelling across scales and disciplines: from embryogenesis to indoor viral transmission“
Katerina is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Applied Mathematics at Cardiff University. She is also the Director for Impact and Engagement at the Cardiff School of Mathematics and an avid science communicator. She holds a DPhil in Applied Mathematics from Oxford University and held postdoctoral positions at Oxford and Nottingham before spending some time outside academia as a business consultant. Katerina has been working on a range of interdisciplinary challenges mainly in biology and medicine, in collaboration with experimentalists, businesses and society. She was a key member of several innovation and engagement projects such as the EU-funded Mathematics for Industry Network (32 countries) and the EU SciShops.eu project, where 18 organisations across Europe tackled pressing societal challenges. She has also cofounded and coordinated two European Study Groups with Industry, week-long modelling workshops where teams of researchers solve industrial challenges. She co-founded the social enterprise SciCo Cyprus and the Mediterranean Science Festival to bring science to the public in entertaining and interactive ways. She is a TEDx Speaker and a TED-Ed educator. During the pandemic she led a team working on COVID-19 modelling, in collaboration with Oxford, and was a member of the Technical Advisory Group of the Welsh government.
Website: www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view/1048719-kaouri-katerina
Massimiliano Germani (GSK)
“PK and PK/PD modeling to analyze data and optimize study design“
Massimiliano Germani was born in Milan, Italy, in 1974. He received the Laurea degree in Biomedical Engineering in 2001 and the Ph.D. degree in Bioinformatics and Bioengineering in 2008. In 2001, He joined Siemens as a Software Engineer. From 2002 to February 2013, he worked with Accelera, Nerviano Medical Sciences (former Pharmacia, Pfizer), Nerviano, Italy, in the Prediction and Modeling area. From March 2013 to September 2016 he worked with Ablynx as a Senior Scientist Pharmacometrics in the Pharmacology group. From September 2016 to January 2022 he worked for UCB as a quantitative clinical pharmacology Director and from February 2022 he is working in GSK as a Clinical Pharmacology Modeling and Simulations director following Vaccine, GH and Neurology projects. He gained experience on Model Based Drug Development approaches focusing on different kind of mathematical techniques including population methods to improve efficiency, support decision making and increase productivity in the R&D process.
He is the author or coauthor of more than 30 publications in international journals and conferences.
Jessica Wojciechowski (Pfizer)
“To ‘go’ or to ‘no-go’? That is the MIDD question“
Dr Jessica Wojciechowski is a Director in Pharmacometrics within the Clinical Pharmacology and Bioanalytics organisation at Pfizer based in Groton, CT USA. Starting as a postdoctoral research fellow in 2017, she has been contributing to Pfizer’s Inflammation and Immunology and Rare Disease portfolios as a pharmacometrician for assets in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, dermatology, and haemophilia. Jessica completed her undergraduate training at the University of South Australia in 2012 with a double degree in Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science with first class honours, trained as a pharmacist at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide, Australia, and gained her PhD in pharmacometrics at the University of South Australia in 2017. Her contributions to model-informed drug development have been, and still continue to be, published in clinical pharmacology journals ranging from population pharmacokinetic, pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic, and gene therapy models.
Organizers
Morgan Craig
Researcher, Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Centre | Link to Morgan’s Lab
Assistant Professor of Mathematics & Statistics, Université de Montréal
Anna Sher
Director, GSK
Rajat Desikan
Director, GSK
Career & Innovation Hub 