Pharmacokinetics literally means the application of kinetics to pharmakon, the Greek word for drugs and poisons. Pharmacokinetics uses a mathematical representation of data to model and interpret the time-course of drug and metabolite concentrations in biological fluids. In general we use three different approaches to analyse pharmacokinetic data from clinical studies; non-compartmental analysis, compartmental modelling, and population pharmacokinetic modelling.

Many drugs used to treat infectious diseases primarily affecting individuals in low-income countries has been fragmentary especially regarding non-clinical studies. Despite its increasing clinical use, limited pre-clinical information can be found addressing pharmacokinetics, metabolism or toxicity. We use pooled human liver microsomes and recombinant preparations of individual CYP450 isoenzymes to identify metabolism pathways. We investigate features such as drug-drug ineractions, metabolic stability, the metabolic path of a compound, the involvement of CYP450 isoenzymes in generating specific metabolites and formation. This information can be used to inform clinical trials (for example of drug combinations) and explain clinical pharmacokinetics.

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