Systems Pharmacology and Pharmacy

Strategy

The Division of Systems Pharmacology and Pharmacy (SPP) aims to develop precision medicine approaches to characterize and predict variation in treatment response and enhance translational drug development strategies.

Variation in drug treatment response remains a major challenge associated with treatment failure and adverse drug reactions. Such variation in treatment response can be caused by intrinsic differences between patients as well as differences caused by heterogeneity in disease.

Our systems approach to pharmacology aims to derive quantitative understanding at the molecular, cellular, organ, and/or organism scale of disease heterogeneity and drug effects. Computational integration of experimental models and biomarker technologies with clinical data allows us to derive innovative precision medicine strategies. Cross-disciplinary expertise and extensive clinical collaborations allows us to identify relevant challenges and to maximize the clinical impact and implementation of our research.

We have strong computational expertise in pharmacometrics and systems pharmacology-based modeling, machine learning techniques, and topological pattern recognition approaches. Experimental translational models developed include innovative in vitro cell culture and in vivo models. We use a range of state-of-the-art measurement technologies including quantitative bioanalysis of drugs and biomarkers, and biophysical characterization at single molecule and single cell level.