Open Source in Pharmacometrics - ACoP7

The 7^th American Confernce in Pharmacometrics was held in Seattle, Washington from October 23 - 27, 2016. On the last day of the conference, there was a session named - “An Overview of Consortia and Open-Source Approaches to Quantitative Drug Development Tools”. This was the first time in my short experience in this field that there has been a discussion on the concept of “sharing” in pharmacometrics. It was bold, new and exciting to see initiatives being taken in our community towards being more collaborative.

You can find the list of speakers and topic session in the conference program page here. In the spirit of the topic, all the speakers decided to share their presentations and collaboratively work in the Open Science Framework (you need to sign up to the website to use it). All presentations made there will be posted here eventually.

I would like to summarize to the best of my ability, the overall message of that session.

1. There was a clear understanding that there needs to be a shift in the culture of doing science in pharmacometrics to be more open and collaborative.
2. There was renewed enthusiasm to work on grander challenges in a consortia setting. Many different consortia were introduced and some of them are listed here:
   • C-Path Initiative - develops models in consortia for Alzheimers, TB and Polycystic Kidney Disease
   • Quantitative Systems Pharmacology (QSP) consortia
   • The Right Dose Consortia
   • NeuroD Community of Practice under the C-Path initiatives
3. There was discussion on the opportunities that we as a community have to influence precision dosing in the clinic and not just to influence drug development projects.
4. A common interest towards crowdsourced incentive based solutions to
   • Convert published literature models into R based models
   • Submit these R based models to the DDMore Model Repository
   • Develop a crowdsourced meta analysis database that allows micro-contributions from researchers all around the world
   • Develop an incentive platform to solve grand challenges in the quantitative clinical drug development and clinical therapeutics
   • Develop training material that are freely accessible to the community
5. A new R-based non-linear mixed effect modeling engine called nlmixr
6. Drive towards pre-print publications using the [bioarxiv]() platform
7. The most important aspect - there was huge shout out to the champions and their open source tools that are already available in pharmacometrics. The banner image is a timeline and list of the many open source tools available in pharmacometrics as of today.

There was a lot of enthusiasm at the end of the session about the prospects of an open and collaborative community in pharmacometrics. One of the ideas that was a result of this session is the Osmosis Project that stands for Open Source Modeling and Simulation Solutions, a term coined by Marc Gastonguay of Metrum Institute. The project will work closely with the excellent efforts of the DDMore consortium and its various aspects. More details will follow up in subsequent posts. Keep an eye out!

Why Now?

I am flying back to Baltimore after attending the Singularity conference on Exponential Medicine at the beautiful Hotel Del Cornado in San Diego. I am pretty impressed with myself that I am sitting calm and writing instead of bouncing around in the plane like flubber - optimistic about the future, excited about the opportunities, thankful to have met some extraordinary people and developed some life-long relationships with peers in different walks of life. The reason I am able to sit calm is because all this excitement has thrown me into self-reflection mode. What have I done so far, what am I doing now and what lies for me in the future. Note that the use of “I” and “me” is only in the context of making my useful out there in this world of opportunities and enthusiasm.

I’ve been excited and optimistic for a long time now, but never formulated my thoughts, never gave them structure and it was all talking. I am writing now in a hope to achieve a few things -

1. Document my thoughts so that the future me can look back at the present and past me
2. Give myself a direction from my current vantage point by looking at how can I make a difference, even if it is a small one - tangible ones
3. Most importantly, achieve/implement actionable items by following up on what I write, as it is much easier to slip away when you talk.

I don’t have any set of specific topics. They will probably be based on the what I am doing at that specific time. I have been heavily influenced by great role models that I will bring up often.

Give me a shout out if you don’t hear from me here.

About Me

Vijay Ivaturi is an Assistant Professor of Pharmacometrics in the Center for Translational Medicine Department of Pharmacy Practice & Science at the University of Maryland–Baltimore; research in clinical therapeutics and Pharmacometrics.

Vijay received a BS in pharmaceutical sciences in 2004, from Manipal University–Manipal, India, a Masters in Industrial Pharmacy in 2006 from St. Johns University – Queens, NY and a PhD in Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology in 2010, from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; his PhD advisor was Dr. Jim Cloyd. He was a postdoctoral fellow with Mats Karlsson at the Uppsala Pharmacometrics Research Group, 2010-2012. In 2013, he moved to the University of Maryland–Blatimore, where he is now an Assistant Professor.

Vijay is an applied pharmacometrician focusing on clinical therapeutics for better clinical dosing decisions. He also is involved in the development of methods and tools for quantitative clinical pharmacology

orcid: 0000-0002-6433-1154