Mechanistic and Non-mechanistic Drug Dynamics Modeling

In the modern sense of computer aided mathematical modeling, it goes back to the early sixties. Historically two main areas of research evolved: the first dedicated to the study of the distribution and elimination of drug in the body (pharmacokinetics, PK), and the second to the body’s responses to the drug (pharmacodynamics, PD). PK/PD has achieved a high level of acceptance: for example, in drug development PK/PD is the main guide to the interpretation of most animal and clinical trials data.

More recently, the modeling of drug behavior has further expanded and increased in importance. Because computing power is now widely available and the understanding of mechanism of drug action has much progressed, the field has moved to include much more than PK/PD. Researchers can now conceive models that include multiple levels of biological complexity and describe not just PK/PD but in-vitro/in-vivo relationships, clinical trials, disease progression, epidemics, health care systems.

We name this extremely large and varied field: Drug Dynamics Modeling (DDM).

From a mechanistic point of view DDM represents the future.

Only with mathematical models and computers can we integrate the enormous amount of knowledge which we accumulate during the process of discovery and development of a drug, and use such knowledge for predicting, designing experiments and clinical trials, optimizing therapy, health policy.

The talk will:

(i) describe drug dynamics, and the most important classes of DD models,

(ii) establish a distinction between mechanistic and non-mechanistic models and describe a particular class of non-mechanistic models,

(iii) show examples of applications of DDM to anti-HIV therapy.