Científicos de la Universidad de Navarra elaboran modelos matemáticos para ahorrar tiempo y costes en el diseño de nuevos fármacos
Scientists at the University of Navarra develop mathematical models to save time and costs in the design of new drugs
The line of research in Pharmacometry is one of nine international groups participating in a European project
Researchers in Pharmacometrics at the University of Navarra are participating in a European project to develop mathematical models to accelerate the process of design and assessment of new drugs. These models will predict doses, formulations or administration regimens virtually, so that both the economic costs and the time of development of the drugs can be reduced.
The group of the School of Pharmacy, led by Professor Iñaki Fernández de Trocóniz, coordinates one of the 10 packages of work divided between the universities of Uppsala (Sweden), Leiden (Netherlands), Paris and Lyon (France), Tel Aviv (Israel), Halle (Germany), Pavia and Rome (Italy) and Navarra (Spain). In addition to the nine universities, a consortium of pharmaceutical companies, including Lilly, Pfizer, Servier, Novartis and Astra Zeneca, is participating in project , which is expected to last five years.
The product of this work will be a publicly available bookshop with pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic models of disease progression and systems biology. "With this, for example, a pharmaceutical company that wants to develop a new anti-tumor could access the bookshop and use a model that relates tumor size with survival time and thus save the months it would take to develop a model of this subject", explains Professor Fernandez de Troconiz.
research "Insilico"
In this sense, the expert from the University of Navarra recalls that the European project , graduate "Drug Disease Model Resources (DDMoRe)", arises as a result of the very low percentage of drugs that reach the market after many failed programs of study , with enormous costs and years of unproductive research ".
According to the coordinator of project, this form of work that advances some parameters based on models - called "in silico" - is very attractive, "since it generates programs of study and virtual patients in whom, based on information obtained from the first programs of study of a drug, aspects such as dosage can be evaluated". The mathematical models reflect characteristics such as absorption, distribution, elimination and pharmacological properties.
Apart from Dr. Fernández de Trocóniz, the research team of department at Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology is composed of María Jesús Garrido, Nieves Vélez de Mendizábal, Elba Romero, Zinnia Parra, Arianna Madrid, and María Matoses, who also collaborate in the Education and training part of project.