Department of Applied Pharmaceutics and Pharmacokinetics belongs to the Center for Integrative Education in Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. With the increasing role of pharmaceuticals in rapidly progressing healthcare systems, quality assurance of their efficacy and safety is further required. The fate of a drug administered to a living body consists of four main processes of absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion. Since the total kinetic balance of each process determines the time profile of drug concentration in target and non-target tissues/cells, pharmacokinetics is closely associated with drug efficacy and side effects. Therefore, drug discovery calls for exploration for drug candidates with superior kinetic characteristics and formulation of drug delivery systems, while clinical chemotherapy requires optimization of dosing regimens based on inter-individual variations in pharmacokinetics. In the Department, we are researching the elucidation of the mechanisms involved in pharmacokinetics and safety, and the development of drug delivery systems that control pharmacokinetics in a desirable manner. In particular,
- Development of tissue/intracellular targeting systems using biomolecular recognition systems
- Development of ADME/Tox evaluation systems using microfluidic devices
- Informatics research on analysis of adverse reaction database and its application to risk assessment
- Pharmacokinetic and pharmacological analysis of adverse reactions for ideal preventive and therapeutic medicines
Since the department chair Professor Yamashita is concurrently in charge of the Department of Drug Delivery Research, we are mostly engaged in joint research activities with the department.