Chairholders
Profile
Fahima Nekka
Faculty of Pharmacy
Université de Montréal
Chair title
NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Pharmacometrics
Chair program
Industrial Research Chairs program
Role
Associate Chair since 2013
Summary
The search for more efficient therapeutics, and concerns about their rational use for target populations and diseases raise important challenges for all parties involved in drug research and development (R&D). However, drug discovery is stagnating, strongly suggesting that the empirical culture that historically prevailed in this field is gradually fading, ceding ground to alternative computational and quantitative techniques. This research Chair program reflects this ever-changing nature of drug R&D and is based on solid mathematical foundations to provide quantitative methods to support rational therapeutic decisions that improve patient health. Central to pharmacometrics are dose–exposure–effect relationships, which are characterized by inherited physiological and drug-related variability as well as nonlinearity. The Chair program will build an integrative probabilistic framework around these two issues, supported by other advanced mathematical and numerical approaches, to control the impact of variability and its associated uncertainty on therapy. This Chair program is built on health-related needs and major opportunities in drug R&D identified through our many years’ efforts invested in pharmaceutical sciences. Putting together, under the same roof, an interdisciplinary team of mathematicians, engineers and biopharmaceutical scientists has been and will be the key to the success of such an initiative.
This Chair program has three complementary layers, encompassing fundamental research, technical development and practical applications. The main activities will cover the mathematical characterization of variability and nonlinearity involved in drug-related issues, rational strategies for the improvement of therapeutic outcomes, and applications to industry and to the health care system.
This Chair will bring tangible benefits to the pharmaceutical industry, with direct improvement of knowledge in quantitative methods for health care. The benefits will be immediate, as they will build on well-established scientific expertise and achievements of the scientists. The support of NSERC will help build the expertise in modelling and simulations in pharmaceutical sciences which are unique in Canada, and also stand out internationally thanks to the approach based on the afore-mentioned methodology.
Partners
- inVentiv Health Clinique
- Pfizer Canada
Contact information
Faculty of Pharmacy
Université de Montréal
Email: fahima.nekka@umontreal.ca
Website:
https://pharm.umontreal.ca/faculte/lequipe/corps-professoral/fiche/in/in14444/sg/Fahima%20Nekka/
