Current Drug Metabolism

Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman, Ph.D. in organic chemistry (Cambridge University, 1968), has over 1,055 international publications including 210 books. He won the UNESCO Science Prize (1999) and was elected Fellow of Royal Society (London, 2006). He was conferred honorary doctorate degrees by many universities including Cambridge University and many others. Furthermore, Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman was elected Honorary Life Fellow of Kings College, Cambridge University, and the Austrian government honoured him with its high civil award “Grosse Goldene Ehrenzeischen am Bande" (2007). He is the only scientist from the Muslim world to be Foreign Fellow (“Academician”) of Chinese and Korean Academies of Sciences. The University of Technology Mara (UiTM), Malaysia, has established “Atta-ur-Rahman Institute of Natural Product Discovery” in his honour. Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman was the Federal Minister of Science and Technology of Pakistan, and he is Chairman of UN Committee on Science, Technology and Innovation for UNESCAP region covering 62 countries.

Presently, I am working as Assistant Professor of Biochemistry (Since May, 2015) in the Department of Basic Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Jeddah, KSA. I have a research experience of almost 12 years in the field of cancer genetics and molecular biology. I have published almost 75 scientific papers in national and international journals of repute on wide variety of topics including Genetics, Molecular Biology, Oncology, Biochemistry and Colorectal, Breast, Prostate, Esophageal & Bladder Cancer. In many of them I was the first, or the corresponding author. Currently, the citation index (h) of my articles is 20 and i10 is 37.

Dr. Aljabali received a doctorate degree in Bionanotechnology from the world-leading John Innes Research institution. He was appointed as postdoctoral research fellow at the cardiovascular department- University of Oxford (2011-2014). Currently, He is an Associate professor of nanoscience and biotechnology at the faculty of Pharmacy-Yarmouk University. He authored 50 reviewed publications. He is interested in the development of biocompatible drug delivery vehicles and study their cytotoxic effect in addition to selective molecular imaging, drug targeting and inflammation.

Upendra A. Argikar is a Senior Research Investigator at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He received a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from University of Minnesota, USA. He has 15+ years of research experience in drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics. At Novartis he has been an active member of projects spanning many disease areas. Currently, he focuses on metabolite identification and structure elucidation of new chemical entities and clinical candidates. Upendra has continued to be interested in conjugative metabolism by uridine diphospho-glucuronosyl transferases, a topic on which he has co-authored research articles, reviews, and book chapters.

Suresh Balani is in Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics department at Takeda Pharmaceuticals International Co. in Cambridge, MA, currently directing drug development in Gastroenterology and Central Nervous System portfolios. He received his Ph.D. at Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, U.K., and subsequently worked at National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD; Merck Research Labs at West Point, PA; and DuPont Pharmaceuticals at Delaware. He has published over 100 scientific papers and abstracts, and has 10 patents. He is on the Editorial Board of Current Drug Metabolism.

John R. Cashman, Ph.D., President, has more than 30 years experience in biomedical research. In 1997, he founded the Human BioMolecular Research Institute to do fundamental and applied research to address human diseases. Previously, he was at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, was Associate Director for the IGEN Research Institute and was Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UC San Francisco. He was a postdoc with Professor E.J. Corey (1982-1984). Dr. Cashman received his Bachelors degree in chemistry and biology at the College of Creative Studies, UC Santa Barbara (1977), MS and then Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Kansas (1982). Dr. Cashman is the author of over 240 research articles, book chapters and patents in drug discovery and evaluation.

Dr. Chen obtained her Ph.D. degree in Biomedical engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology of China (1996). She is one of the earliest researchers in the field of nanosafety in China. Dr. Chen currently is a principal investigator at CAS Key Laboratory for Biomedical Effects of Nanomaterials and Nanosafety in the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology of China. She has authored/co-authored over 150 peer-reviewed papers /book chapters, has more than ten issued patents and finished one ISO standard. She has been awarded the Second Prize of the National Natural Science Awards (2012), China Outstanding Young Female Scientists Awards (2014) and the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (2014).

Since 2002, Dr. Daali has been the Head of the Research Laboratory of the Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology Service at Geneva University Hospitals. Dr. Daali completed his doctorate in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the School of Pharmacy of Geneva University in 2001, where he also served as a Senior Lecturer. He joined the Clinical Pharmacology Service at Geneva University Hospitals in 2002. His research activity is related to personalized medicine related to drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics and PBPK. He also developed several in vitro models for drug metabolism and transport characterization and drug-drug interaction studies.

Ayse Basak ENGIN, MSc, PhD, PhD, ERT, ATS received her undergraduate degree in Pharmacy and MSc. degree in Toxicology. She completed her Toxicology PhD (2008) and Immunology PhD (2015) studies at Gazi University. She is currently working at the same University, Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Toxicology as a full professor. Dr. Engin authored/co-authored several publications, book chapters and edited 3 books. She has been awarded Blair-Curtius-Pfleiderer-Wachter Award for Pteridine Research (2004) and Turkish Pharmaceutical Science Academy Young Scientist Award (2013). Her work is mainly focused on pteridines and tryptophan metabolism-neurotoxicity, immunotoxicology and nanosafety- nanomedicine.

Dr. Huile Gao received his PhD in Pharmaceutics from School of Pharmacy, Fudan University in 2013 under the supervision of Prof. Xinguo Jiang. Then he joined the West China School of Pharmacy, Sichuan University as an Instructor in July 2013 and was promoted to an Associate Professor in July 2014. Dr. Gao’s research interests focus on the design, synthesis, characterization and evaluation of stimuli responsive nanomaterials for drug and imaging probe delivery to improve treatment and diagnosis of human diseases especially tumor and brain diseases. He has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles with an H-index of 28.

Hansruedi Glatt obtained a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Basle. He was Professor for Toxicology and Pharmacology at the University of Mainz (1987-1994), Professor for Molecular Toxicology at the University of Potsdam (1994-2013) and Head of the Department of Nutritional Toxicology at the German Institute of Human Nutrition (1994-2013). He also teaches in the Master Program in Toxicology at the Charité Berlin (since 2008) and is Senior Professor at the Federal Institute of Risk Assessment (since 2014). He has published nearly 290 articles in scientific journals and 85 book chapters.

Dr. Bin Guo is currently a Professor at the Key Laboratory of Chemical Biology and Traditional Chinese Medicine Research (Ministry of Education of China), Hunan Normal University. His research interests are towards bioactivation of a foreign chemical, mass spectrometry-based probing of reactive metabolite profiles and their chemical modifications to biomolecules. He did Ph.D. (majoring in Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics) from Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM), CAS in 2005. He has authored over 30 research papers, 5 review articles, 3 book chapters and 5 issued patents.

Dr. Hao obtained his Ph.D. degree in Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics from China Pharmaceutical University. Currently Dr. Hao is a professor and the dean of School of Pharmacy in China Pharmaceutical University. His research mainly covers the molecular mechanisms of drug disposition and metabolic regulation guided target discovery. He has published more than 120 scientific publications and is currently an editor of this journal.

Paul F. Hollenberg, Ph.D., is a Professor Emeritus of Pharmacology at the University of Michigan Medical School. He received his Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from the University of Michigan and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois. He was on the faculty at Northwestern University Medical School, Wayne State University School of Medicine (Chair of Pharmacology), and then at the University of Michigan Medical School where he was Chair for more than 20 years. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers and received more that $29 million in NIH funding as a PI or Co-PI.

Dr. Griff Humphreys is currently Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics at Bristol-Myers Squibb. He received his graduate training in chemistry at the University of Virginia and completed post-doctoral training at the Center in Molecular Toxicology at Vanderbilt University. His interests include the consequences of reactive metabolite formation, development of new analytical methodologies, reaction phenotyping of CYP and UGT catalyzed biotransformations, identification of endogenous probes for ADME-related protein function, predictive metabolism and toxicology models, in vitro-in vivo correlations, and strategies for candidate optimization.

Dr. Hutzler earned his Ph.D. in pharmaceutical sciences from West Virginia University under the direction of Dr. Timothy S. Tracy and completed a post doc at Pharmacia Corporation in Kalamazoo, Michigan with Dr. Larry Wienkers. Dr. Hutzler is currently Director of In Vitro Metabolism at Q2 Solutions Bioanalytical and ADME Labs in Indianapolis. Prior to joining Q2 Solutions, Dr. Hutzler was a drug metabolism and pharmacokinetic (DMPK) project lead at Boehringer-Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals in Connecticut, and held a similar project lead position at Pfizer Inc. in St. Louis. With over 14 years of experience in the DMPK field, Dr. Hutzler’s research has included atypical enzyme kinetics for cytochrome P450 enzymes, inhibition SAR of CYP2D6, extrapolation of in vitro data to human clearance predictions, and most recently, aldehyde oxidase. He has published more than thirty articles in peer-reviewed journals and four book chapters.

Seiichi Ishida is Section Chief at Division of Pharmacology at National Institute of Health Sciences. He received his PhD in Pharmaceutical Science from the University of Tokyo, Japan in 1993, and conducted postdoctoral studies at The Cancer Institute (Tokyo) and at Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Duke University Medical Centre. His research focuses primarily on the development of in vitro cell assay platform for the evaluation of drug metabolism and drug induced liver injury and their application to the regulatory science field.

Ramesh Jayaraman is a Drug Discovery scientist with expertise in Pharmacokinetics, Pharmacodynamics and Preclinical development and has worked in the field of drug discovery and development for the last twenty four years. He has been part of Lead identification, optimization and product development teams in large and medium pharmaceutical companies. He is currently the co-founder and the Chief Scientific Officer of TheraIndx Lifesciences, India. He is responsible for overseeing the scientific projects at TheraIndx. At S*BIO (Singapore), as a senior scientist of preclinical development, he worked on preclinical ADME, PK, preclinical development and clinical pharmacokinetics of small molecule targeted anti-cancer agents such as Pacritinib (SB1518 - in phase 3 clincial trials), Pracinostat (SB939 - in phase 2 clinical trials), SB1317 (in phase 1 clincial trials) and SB1578(Phase1clinical trials)

Dr Mahmud Kajbaf holds a Ph.D. from the University of London, King’s College, Biopharmacy Department in the area of drug metabolism and MSc from Aston University, Birmingham. Currently Dr Kajbaf is Senior Scientist at Aptuit. He has received several awards and honors, such as: Aptuit CEO Excellence Award, GlaxoSmithKline the psychiatry CEDD Leadership Team Award. He is also on the editorial board for several journals. He has published over 33 research articles related to drug metabolism, in vivo-in vitro correlation, drug-drug interaction, HPLC, NMR and mass spectrometry.

Ethirajulu Kantharaj currently works at D3, A*STAR, Singapore as Head of Technical, R & D. He is a professional drug discovery & development leader with 21 years of experience in DMPK, CMC and Toxicology and early drug development across therapy areas in both small biotech and large pharmaceutical setting. In D3, he is responsible for all the preclinical development activities starting from preclinical development candidate to IND submissions. He was involved in the preclinical development of several NMEs leading to successful INDs in USA and regulatory submissions in Singapore and Australia enabling start of clinical studies. He also strategized successful regulatory meetings with both US (FDA) and EU (EMA) for seeking agreements on the non-clinical development plans and strategy from pre-IND stages to advanced clinical development stages. Previously, Dr Ethirajulu has worked with S*BIO Pte Ltd, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development as team leader, ADME/Tox department and AstraZeneca R&D as Head of DMPK and Bioanalytical Chemistry.

Dr. Supratik Kar is a research associate at Jackson State University, Mississippi, USA. He has completed his B. Pharm. (2008) and M. Pharm. (2010) degree from Jadavpur University (Kolkata, India) securing first position in both degrees and earned his PhD (2015) from the Jadavpur University (Kolkata, India). He is a Former visiting researcher at the University of Gdańsk (Poland). Dr. Kar has been working and gaining experience in molecular modeling studies for ten years. He has published 50 research and review articles, 9 book chapters till date with h-index 20. He has also co-authored 2 QSAR related books in Academic press and Springer. He is also the Reviewer of more than 15 reputed journals. ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9411-2091.

Dr. Jed Lampe is an R01-funded principal investigator, educator, and scientific leader in the ADME/DMPK field. After receiving his Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Washington, he completed post-doctoral training at UCSF under the tutelage of Professor Paul Ortiz de Montellano, where he studied ligand binding dynamics and their relationship to enzyme function in cytochrome P450 enzymes using pioneering 2-dimensional NMR techniques with site-specifically incorporated unnatural amino acids. More recently, he has served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology, Toxicology and Therapeutics at the University of Kansas Medical Center where his current research interests involve the application of bioanalytical, biophysical, and computational techniques to understand and predict drug metabolism and disposition in the neonate and developing infant. He serves on a number of editorial boards, including Current Drug Metabolism, PLOS One, and the Journal of Drug Metabolism and Toxicology.

Dr. Su-Jun Lee received his PhD degree in Toxicology from Oregon State University, USA and finished his post-doctoral research fellow in NIH, USA. Dr. Su-Jun Lee has been professor of Department of Pharmacology at Inje University College of Medicine, Inje University, Korea since 2006. He has authored over 50 publications and several book chapters. He has been serving as a reviewer and an editorial board member for a number of journals. His research interest includes pharmacogenomics, functional genomics, drug metabolism, and molecular toxicology.

Professor Chang-Xiao Liu graduated from Peking University School of Pharmaceutical Sciences (formerly Beijing Medical College) in 1965. In a research career of 50 years, Dr. Liu has been committed to the study of drug metabolism/pharmacokinetics and pharmacology, and has particularly outstanding contributions on innovative drugs and compound Chinese medicine formulations. Professor Liu published more than 300 academic articles and 12 books on drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics in English and in Chinese. Dr. Liu has also served as a Director of State Key Laboratory of drug delivery technology pharmacokinetics and ISSX China Office. Dr. Liu won the Bauhinia Medical Achievement Award (Hong Kong) in 2000, elected Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2003 and was awarded the Special Contribution Award ISSX in 2013.

Dr. Yi Lu received his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics from Sichuan University in 2006 and joined Fudan University after graduation. In 2011, he was promoted to be an associate professor. Dr. Lu’s research interests include nano-drug delivery systems, transdermal drug delivery systems and nanocrystals. Recently, he developed self-discriminative hybrid nanocrystals with ACQ fluorescent probes to explore in vivo fate of nanocrystals. He has published more than 90 peer-reviewed articles in SCI journals, five book chapters, and has applied for seven patents. Dr. Lu is also editorial board member of Journal of Basic and Clinical Pharmacy and Chinese Chemical Letters.

Dr. Prakash is a Senior Research Fellow in Drug Metabolism, Pharmacokinetics and Clinical Pharmacology department at Agios, Cambridge, MA. Prior to joining Agios, he worked at Vanderbilt University, Pfizer Global Research and Development and Bogen. For the last 30 years, Dr. Prakash has been involved in the drug metabolism and clinical pharmacology studies to support drug discovery, development and registration. His research is primarily focused on the development and utilization of novel approaches and techniques to assess the metabolism and toxicological aspects of the new chemical entities. He is the author of more than 265 manuscripts, book chapters, presentations and patents.

Dr. Martin Krøyer Rasmussen has completed his PhD in food sciences from Department of Food Science, Aarhus University, Denmark. He did his post-doctoral training both at University of Montpellier, France and Aarhus University, Denmark. He is currently an assistant professor in the department of food science, Aarhus University, Denmark. He has published 47 papers and more than 30 abstracts. His research interests includes regulation of human and porcine cytochrome p450s, food-drug interactions and cell culturing

James F. Rusling was awarded B.Sc. in Chemistry from Drexel University in 1969, and Ph.D. from Clarkson University in 1979. He is Professor of Chemistry at University of Connecticut, Professor of Surgery and member of the Neag Cancer Center at University of Connecticut Health Center, and adjunct Professor of Chemistry at National Univ. of Ireland, Galway. Current research includes new cancer diagnostics via detection of biomarker proteins, low-cost 3D printed immunoarrays for point-of-care diagnostics, electrochemical and mass spectrometric arrays for toxicity screening, tumor suppressor gene damage, and fundamental bioelectrochemistry. He has authored more than 380 research papers and several books, and is a musician interested in Irish and American folk styles.

Dr. Silva is an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Technology and Biotechnology and a Researcher at CEBIMED, FP-ENAS, University Fernando Pessoa, Porto, Portugal. She is also an Invited Professor and Researcher at UCIBIO, ReQuimTe, Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Technology, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Porto, Portugal. She received her PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences (specialization in Pharmaceutical Technology) from the University of Porto and Graduation in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University Fernando Pessoa. Her current research interests are: development of new delivery systems for oral, cutaneous and nasal administration of drugs and biopharmaceuticals. Dr. Silva is an Author and reviewer for several international scientific journals in the area of Pharmaceutical Technology and Biotechnology. Supervisor and co-supervisor of PhD, MSc and Undergraduate students.

Dr. Soars is a Senior Principal Scientist in the Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics department at Bristol-Myers Squibb in Wallingford CT. He received his Bachelors in biochemistry from the University of Warwick in 1998 and a PhD from the University of Dundee in 2002. From 2002-2003, he completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Eli Lilly where he worked on drug glucuronidation under the supervision of Steve Wrighton. He then moved to AstraZeneca where he worked for 8 years developing and implementing both drug metabolism assays and more recently transporter methodology. Since 2011 Dr. Soars has worked at Bristol –Myers Squibb where he helped develop the transporter strategy in Drug Discovery. His Research interests include the prediction of pharmacokinetics and drug-drug interactions for new chemical entities and also the application of drug transporter methodology in early Drug Discovery. Dr Soars has published more than 30 scientific publications and is on the Editorial advisory board for a number of publications including Xenobiotica, Current Drug Metabolism and Drug Metabolism letters.

Dr. Tadatoshi Tanino has been associate professor of Laboratory of Pharmaceutics at Tokushima Bunri University, Tokushima Japan. He received his PhD degree from Kinki University in Japan and was trained at the University of Toronto (Prof. Dr. Jack Utreacht), ON, Canada in 2010- 2011. Now, his primary research interests are gas messenger-dependent drug pharmacokinetics and liver damage. He has published over 60 papers in SCI journals such as Biochem Pharmacol, Drug Metab Dispos, Pharm Res, Cancer Letters, J Drug Targeting, J Pharm Sci, and Chem Res in Toxicol.

Yoshihiro Uesawa received his Ph.D. degree from the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, in 1992. He is a Professor at Meiji Pharmaceutical University, Tokyo, Japan. His major areas of research are related to computational toxicology, pharmaceutical interactions between medications and foods, analyses of quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSAR), machine learning, and data mining. In September of 2009, he became a first-pass winner in the CADASTER Environmental Toxicity Prediction Challenge, organized by ICANN’09: International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, European Neural Network Society and CADASTER project. In addition, in January 2015, he became one of the winners in the “Tox21 DATA Challenge 2014”, organized by NIH, USA.

Prof. Dr. Mert Ulgen graduated from Marmara University, Faculty of Pharmacy, Istanbul, Turkey in 1981. He finished his MSc degree at the same department and in 1992, he obtained a PhD degree from University of London, King's College, Biopharmacy Department in the area of Drug Metabolism. He returned to Turkey and became an associated Professor in 1993 and a full professor in 1999 at the same department in the area of Pharmaceutical Chemistry. He has got a number of papers on drug synthesis and in vitro hepatic microsomal metabolism of xenobiotics. He directed a number of MSc and PhD thesis. He retired from Marmara University in June 2009 and he became a full time Professor at Acıbadem University, Vocational School of Health Services in the same year. He has a number of administrative duties. He is also a full time chemistry lecturer. He was Director of Enstitute of Health Sciences in Acıbadem University one term (2013-2016). He established Faculty of Pharmacy at the same University in early 2016 and he is currently dean of Pharmacy. He is also head of "Management in Drug Industry" MSc Program.

Dr. Hongbing Wang is a Professor & Program Chair in Experimental and Translational Therapeutics at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. Dr. Wang’s research interests include investigation of the molecular mechanisms that govern nuclear receptor‐mediated induction of metabolizing enzymes and drug transporters in humans, metabolism‐based drugdrug interactions, and drug‐induced liver toxicity.

Nigel Waters is currently a Vice President of Preclinical Development at Black Diamond Therapeutics and has 20 years of pharmaceutical R&D experience. He received his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at Imperial College London, a Ph.D. in Chemistry at Imperial College London, and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology (DABT). He has co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and patents, in the areas of drug discovery, drug metabolism, clinical pharmacology, and preclinical safety assessment.

Dr. Baojian Wu is a Professor of Biopharmaceutics at Jinan University, Guangzhou, China. He is the receiver of “863 Program Young Scientist” and “the Nature Science Foundation of Guangdong for Outstanding Young Scientist”. His primary research interests are the disposition processes and metabolic regulation of phenolic active compounds derived from traditional Chinese medicines (TCM). Dr. Wu’s group has discovered that efflux transporters (MRPs and BCRP) mediated the excretion transport of phase II metabolites, and surprisingly regulated cellular metabolism of phenolic compounds. He has obtained nine research grants and published over 90 papers in SCI journals such as Biochem Pharmacol, Mol Pharm, Pharm Res and Drug Metab Dispos. Dr. Wu received his Ph.D. at the University of Houston, and completed post-doctoral training at Balor College of Medicine. He is serving on the editorial board for two scientific journals, Xenobiotica and Curr Drug Metab.

Prof. Jianbo Xiao obtained his Ph.D. degree in nutritional science from Okayama Prefectural University, Japan, in 2009. Prof. Xiao worked at University of Wuerzbug, Germany from 2013 to 2015, prior to joining University of Macau, China, in 2015. His research interests include nutrition and metabolism of polyphenols, stability of polyphenols, and polyphenols & diabetes. Prof. Xiao has published over 180 papers in international journals. He was a chairperson of 2015 International Symposium on Phytochemicals in Medicine and Food (1-ISPMF 2015) organized by PSE, its second edition (2-ISPMF 2017), and its third edition (3-ISPMF 2018).

Dr. Xie is currently a professor of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. His research mainly covers the metabolism, pharmacokinetics and molecular mechanisms of drug (especially herbal bioactive components, including polysaccharide, saponis, flavonoids, et al). In addition, he also focused on the development of new techniques (such as biosensors) for evaluating the safty and bioactivity of the drug. He has published more than 100 scientific publications and is currently an editor of this journal.

Dr. Jie Xing did PhD from Laboratory of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics from the School of Pharmacy, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, China in 2005. She is currently a Professor at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Shandong University, P.R. China. Dr. Xing has around 23 publications to her credit so far.

Professor Huang-Ping Yu, MD, PhD, works as the Professor and Chairman of Department of Anesthesiology and Vice Chairman of Committee of Medical Research Evaluation of Chang Gung Medical Center (around 3,700 ward beds). In addition, Professor Yu is appointed as the member of Editorial Board of international ‘SHOCK’ journal and associate Editor of Asian Journal of Anesthesiology. He has over 110 publications of book chapters, original articles and review papers being published in the English peer review journals. Professor Yu’s studies investigating the mechanism of therapeutic reagents-induced improvement of organ function and the potential use of therapeutic reagents after trauma/sepsis to prevent organ dysfunction, therefore represent a novel and innovative approach for maintaining organ function under those conditions.

Dr. Beshay Zordoky has completed his PhD in pharmaceutical sciences and his postdoctoral training in cardiovascular research from University of Alberta, Canada. He is currently an assistant professor in the department of Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology, University of Minnesota, USA. He has published 31 papers, one book chapter, and more than 35 abstracts (h-index of 21). He has been serving as a reviewer and an editorial board member of a number of reputable journals. His research interests include cardio-oncology, cardiovascular pharmacology, and drug metabolism.

Dr. Guillermo Alberto Keller is professor of pharmacology (University of Buenos Aires and Favaloro University), training coordinator in clinical pharmacology, coordinator of pharmacovigilance programs, and chief of emergency department at a Santojanni General Hospital (Buenos Aires). Dr. Keller serves as a member of the ethics committee of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires, and as a guest editor of several reputed scientific journals on an honorable basis. His research is focused on clinical pharmacokinetics, population PK modeling, pharmacometrics aiming to explain PK variability in various drugs and Drug Safety.

Dr. Volker Lauschke is Associate Professor and group leader in Personalized Medicine and Drug Development as well as Director of the Microfluidics Facility at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. His research group uses 3D cell culture systems of primary human cells, microfluidics and integrative bioinformatics approaches to predict drug toxicity and to identify novel therapeutic strategies for complex metabolic diseases. Furthermore, the lab develops artificial intelligence tools to improve personalized pharmacological therapy. Dr. Lauschke is an Oversea Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and awardee of the Lennart Philipson Award. In addition, he is co-founder and CEO of HepaPredict AB, a biotech company offering evaluations of drug metabolism and safety as well as drug target validations based on a novel microphysiological 3D spheroid culture platform.

Dr. Mochel is a Principal Investigator with a broad background in clinical and basic Pharmacology sciences, serving as a board-certified veterinary pharmacologist and toxicologist (DECVPT) in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Iowa State University. Dr. Mochel has extensive post-graduate training in Pharmacology (MS), Pharmacokinetics (MS), and applied Mathematical Modeling (PhD) and he currently chairs the Education and Residency Committee of the College of Veterinary Pharmacology and Toxicology (ECVPT). In addition, Dr. Mochel has in-depth experience in Drug Research and Development, working for about 10 years in the human pharmaceutical industry (both at Novartis and Roche), which provides him with the necessary background to evaluate the efficacy and safety of candidate drugs used in animal systems and human patients. Dr. Mochel is currently a Councilor and Fellow of the American Academy of Veterinary Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

Dr. Katarina Vucicevic (PhD in Pharmacokinetics) is associate professor at University of Belgrade - Faculty of Pharmacy. As a Fulbright scholar she spent one year at UCSF, USA advancing her skills and expertise in PKPD modeling. Her research is focused on clinical pharmacokinetics, population PKPD modeling, pharmacometrics aiming to explain PK and PD variability in various drugs. Dr. Vucicevic has published over 35 research articles and reviews, co-author of university book in pharmacokinetics and she has contributed to multiple book chapters.

Dr.Wei Cai received his Ph.D degree from Beijing University of Chinese Medicine in 2015. He is currently an associate professor at school of pharmaceutical science, Hunan University of Medicine. During 2017-2018, he was a visiting scholar at Yale University under the supervision of Prof.Yung-Chi Cheng. He is especially interested in metabolism and pharmacokinetics of traditional Chinese medicine. He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed papers.

Dr. Sagnik Chatterjee currently serves as a senior research investigator in BBRC, Bangalore. His group is working on impact of transporters in disposition, toxicity and efficacy of molecules, in normal and in disease conditions. He completed his M. S (Pharm) from NIPER, Mohali, India in natural products chemistry (2005-2007) and then obtained his PhD degree from KU Leuven, Belgium in exploring drug-induced cholestasis (2010-2014). He developed and validated a sandwich- cultured hepatocyte-based system, with externally added bile acids, that is widely accepted and recommended by International Transporter Consortium. Before PhD he worked with AstraZeneca India, in their drug metabolism group (2007-2009). He has published in 9 peer-reviewed articles with present citations tally of 290.

Dr. Hui Ding is the associate Professor of Center for Informational Biology at University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. She received her Ph.D. from Inner Mongolia University, P.R. China in 2009. Her research is in the areas of computational system biology. She has published over 60 peer-reviewed papers in SCI-indexed journals. Her publications have been cited over 3,406 times with H-index of 31 in Google Scholar (update in 2019.8).

Dr. Ianiro received his medical degree in 2009 summa cum laude at the Catholic University of Rome.He trained in gastroenterology at the same University. He is currently gastroenterologist at the Digestive Disease Center of the Fondazione A. Gemelli IRCCS, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome, Italy. He has since gone on to establish himself as a key clinical and translational investigator focusing mainly in the field of intestinal microbiota with 99 peer reviewed publications including some of the best referral journal in Gastroenterology and Internal Medicine, including NEJM, Circulation, Annals of Internal Medicine, Gut, Nature Reviews Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Pharmacology &Therapeutics, Clinical Gastroenterology & Hepatology, Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, etc.). He was the secretary of two international consensus conferences on fecal microbiota transplantation. He was in the Young Talent Group, and now is in the Research Committee, of the UEG (United European Gastroenterology). Dr. Ianiro has received several research grants in support of his innovative research (the most recent from the Italian Ministry of Health as PI for a project entitled "Targeting gut microbiota to improve efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors in patients withadvanced renal cell carcinoma").

Dr. Mohammad Amjad Kamal is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor at the King Fahd Medical Research Center (KFMRC), King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. He is leading a highly productive global collaborative research team based from Novel Global Community Educational Foundation (NGCEF), Australia. Dr. Kamal's biochemical research in the field of Alzheimer’s disease, Type 2 diabetes and leukemia has culminated in more than 380 publications in internationally respected journals. Dr. Kamal was awarded a prestigious U2000 Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2000 by the University of Sydney. This three years highly competitive award funded his research on the "Inhibition of amido phosphoribosyltransferase by new antifolates". Amongst numerous projects, Dr. Kamal also collaborated on the molecular biological research project “Linkage of Alzheimer’s disease and Type 2 diabetes” at the University of Technology, Sydney. Moreover, he is serving as an EiC/regional/editorial member/guest editor of several reputed scientific journals on honorable basis.

Dr. Supratik Kar is a research associate at Jackson State University, Mississippi, USA. He has completed his B. Pharm. (2008) and M. Pharm. (2010) degree from Jadavpur University (Kolkata, India) securing first position in both degrees and earned his PhD (2015) from the Jadavpur University (Kolkata, India). He is a Former visiting researcher at the University of Gdańsk (Poland). Dr. Kar has been working and gaining experience in molecular modeling studies for ten years. He has published 50 research and review articles, 9 book chapters till date with h-index 20. He has also co-authored 2 QSAR related books in Academic press and Springer. He is also the Reviewer of more than 15 reputed journals. ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9411-2091.

Dr. Kei Kunimasa, (born December 25, 1981, Hyogo, Japan), studied medicine at Osaka University, graduating with an M.D. in 2006. He later also received a Ph.D. (2016) in medical science from Kobe University. While a graduate student, he researched cell competition using Drosophila melanogaster and found Sas (stranded at second) controls cell competition between normal cell and neighboring cancer cell (Nature. 2017), and he also researched cancer metabolism under Tatsuya Nagano (Cancer Science. 2018). From 2017, he worked at Osaka International Cancer Institute as senior staff and researched clinical cancer genomics using next generation sequencing with human samples. He also won the fund from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSJP)(2019) and Takeda science foundation(2019).

Dr. Marcello Maida graduated from the medical school at University of Palermo. He is a consultant gastroenterologist at S.Elia- Raimondi Hospital in Caltanissetta, Italy, member of the governing council of the Young Italian Gastroenterologists Association (AGGEI) and Director of the Multimedia Educational Platform of Italian Medical Schools of Gastroenterology (Gastrolearning). He is author of several scientific papers indexed on PubMed and published in impact factor journals. Dr. Maida’s research interests include several areas of liver diseases, including hepatocellular carcinoma, viral hepatitis, autoimmune liver diseases, cirrhosis and non-invasive evaluation of chronic liver diseases.

Dr. Nagano obtained a Ph.D. from the Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine (Kobe, Japan). Dr. Nagano also received M.D. from the Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine and has a 17 years’ experience as physician in general hospital. Currently Dr. Nagano is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Respiratory Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine. His present research field is clinical pharmacology in cancer pharmacotherapy. He has published more than 40 scientific publications and has 1 patent. Dr. Fujita is currently the Executive Guest Editor of this journal (Current Drug Metabolism).

Dr. Nakov is a consultant gastroenterologist at Tsaritsa Yoanna University Hospital, Sofia. He obtained a doctorate (PhD) in Gastroenterology from the Medical University of Sofia. Dr. Nakov is a member of Young Talents Group and Education Committee at United European Gastroenterology (UEG), a course director of UEG Summer School and a president at Association for young hepatogastroenterologists in Bulgaria.

Hilmi Orhan is a Professor in the Department of Toxicology at Ege University, Izmir, Turkey. He obtained his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Toxicology from Hacettepe University in 2000. He was a visiting fellow at Vrije Universiteit, The Netherlands in 1995. During his Ph.D., he received a Turkish Scientific and Technical Research Council (TUBITAK) /NATO A2 grant and researched the Division of Molecular Toxicology from the same university on the biotransformation and toxicity of volatile anesthetics (1997–1999). Dr. Orhan has authored or co-authored 40 publications in peer-reviewed international journals and 18 publications in local journals. He has taught toxicology to both graduate and undergraduate levels and has successfully supervised eight M.Sc. and several Ph.D., students.

Dr. Pereira graduated in Biological Sciences from the Regional University of Cariri (URCA). Dr. Pereira obtained a PhD in Biotechnology from the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE-RENORBIO. He has experience in Microbiology, Toxicology of Natural and Synthetic Products and Biosafety, acting on the following subjects: antibacterial activity, inflammation, toxicity and cancer. He is also a reviewer for several international journals.

Dr. Lv-Hui Sun is a Full Professor in the Department of Animal Nutrition and Feed Science at Huazhong Agricultural University. Before taking the faculty position here, he worked as a Visiting Ph.D. student at the department of Animal Science at Cornell University from 2010 to 2012. He received a Ph.D. degree in Comparative Nutrition between Human and Animal from Sichuan Agricultural University in 2013 and B.S. degree in Animal Science from Wuhan Polytechnic University in 2007. His current research aims at understanding the molecular mechanisms of mycotoxins hepatotoxicity and immunotoxicity and dietary strategies to counteract the toxic effects of mycotoxins.

Dr. S.R. Tintino completed his graduation in Biological Sciences from the Regional University of Cairri. He further obtained a PhD in Biotechnology from the Federal University of Pernambuco. He is currently serving as a Substitute Professor at the Regional University of Cairri-URCA and he is a Coordinator of the Universal CNP project. He is also a member of the research group of the Laboratory of Microbiology and Molecular Biology. He is experienced in the area of Microbiology, with emphasis on antimicrobial activity of natural products and isolated substances and in the Genetics of Microorganisms with emphasis on mechanisms of inhibition of bacterial efflux pumps. He is a reviewer for several international journals.

Dr. Nuno Vale is an Invited Professor of Pharmacology (Pharmacokinetic and Drug Metabolism) at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Porto. His research interest lies at the intersection between Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacology, namely on the development of new conjugates with peptides and nanoparticles for drug delivery in cancer and central nervous system. His main research focus is also on the Pharmacokinetic and Drug Metabolism of approved drugs for drug repurposing, and in PBPK Modeling and Drug-Drug Interactions.

Dr. Yi Wang is a Professor in College of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Zhejiang University. He received his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Analysis from Zhejiang University in 2007. His laboratory is devoted to the modernization of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). He is especially interested in screening and identifying bioactive compounds from TCM as well as revealing their ADME properties and mechanism of action. Dr. Wang’s lab established a set of bioassays including cellular, zebrafish, and animal models. He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers, book and chapters.

Professor/Dr. Jiayu Zhang received his Ph.D degree in pharmacognosy (Chemistry of Chinese Materia Medica) from Peking University. He is currently a professor at BIN ZHOU Medical University. During 2011-2019, he worked in Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, which is a famous University of traditional Chinese medicine in China. He is especially interested in metabolism and pharmacokinetics of traditional Chinese medicine. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed papers.