How important is the pharmacological component to developing new cancer drugs?
My own belief is that the relationship between people who are knowledgeable on tumor models in animals, and the scientists or pharmacologists who actually study how the drug is handled by the animals, is vital. If you have a pretty good idea of what the relationships are between concentrations of drugs used in animals, that is, whether the targets are being achieved and whether there’s any adverse affects, you can be pretty informed in your decision about how to move to the next step. So many of the less than successful outcomes that have occurred over the past few years have been because there hasn’t been a good understanding of the pharmacological and pharmaceutical aspects. The fact that the University of Maryland has a very active pharmacy school — both in terms of training pharmacists and in drug discoveries and new approaches to developing medicines — gives us a lot of potential to bring new therapies to patients with cancer.
