Brisbane 2013

The 15th annual Population Approach Group in Australia and New Zealand (PAGANZ) meeting will be held in Brisbane, at the School of Pharmacy, Pharmacy Australia Centre of Excellence (PACE) at  the University of Queensland, Brisbane. Australia from Wednesday 13th to Friday 15th February. A population analysis workshop is included in the PAGANZ meeting.

Field

Pharmacometrics, particularly regarding the design, analysis, interpretation and application of pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic studies.

Who should attend?

The PAGANZ meeting is the Australasian forum for scientists with a research and professional interest in the use of the population approach in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. A strong focus of this meeting is the application of population modelling and simulation techniques in the experimental, clinical and regulatory settings of drug development.

This meeting is designed for scientists and clinicians working in basic or clinical pharmacology research, pharmaceutical industry, regulatory bodies and postgraduate students. The meeting combines hands-on workshops given by leaders in the field and a scientific meeting giving researchers the opportunity to present and discuss their own work. This is an informal meeting and in the past has been very productive in helping and guiding researchers in this important area of pharmacology and drug development.

When

The dates are Wednesday 13 February 2013 to Friday 15 February 2013.

Wednesday and Thursday will be full days starting at 8:30 and Friday will be finishing with afternoon tea at around 3 PM. Registrations opens at 8:00 on Wednesday.

The workshops will start on Wednesday morning and run until approx. Thursday lunchtime. Afterwards the PAGANZ scientific program will start.

Where

PACE is the Pharmacy Australia Centre of Excellence. It is a state-of-the-art, purpose built facility that is the new home to the UQ School of Pharmacy.

PACE is located at 20 Cornwall Street, Woolloongabba, QLD 4102, Australia. Find PACE on Google Maps

Free under-cover parking provided by the School of Pharmacy will be avaivable on the conference days via Kent Street.

Internet access will be available through the computers at the PACE Health Sciences Library, located on Level 6 of the PACE building. There is no wifi access to the internet.

More information including accomadation, travel tips and tourist information can be found here: ABOUT BRISBANE.

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Abstract submission

Abstract submission will open together with the conference registrations.

Deadline for abstract inclusion in the printed conference proceedings is 31st January 2013.

Instructions:

Abstracts may be posted via the ‘Abstract/submit abstract’ link at the top. After signing into your profile, the ‘post new abstract’ link at the bottom will take you to the submission form. Abstracts may be copied and pasted as formatted text from Word or submitted as HTML. You must also select on this form your preference for either a poster or oral presentation. Abstracts may be edited or removed after submission using the same form until the start of the meeting.

Abstracts that are received or modified after the submission date but before the start of the meeting will not be printed but will become part of the online conference proceedings if they are presented at the meeting. Attachment of the posters and oral presentations as PDF’s after the conference online is highly recommended.

Authors are strongly encouraged to submit at least the title of an abstract as soon as possible so that the scientific program can be decided. The abstract content may be updated as many times as needed before the closing date for printing.

Poster presenation

Poster format should be portrait  and the size not greater than 120 x 85 cm.

Social evening

The Social evening will be on Thursday February 14th

Population Analysis WorkShop (PAWS) (1.5 days)

The PAWS sessions will consist of lectures and hands-on exercises at a computer. During the hands-on exercises, tutors will be available for consultation and assistance. The Beginners Workshop for NONMEM and the Intermediate Workshop will be conducted as parallel sessions. Attendance at the Intermediate Workshop requires previous experience with the conduct of at least one population approach analysis.

The Beginner’s Workshop will  be taught by Prof. Carl Kirkpatrick, Prof. Nick Holford and  Dr. Christine Staatz.

The workshop will introduce the theory and practice of population modelling with NONMEM 7.

Required Knowledge: Participants should be familiar with general concepts of pharmacokinetics.

The Intermediate Workshop will be taught by Dr Elodie Plan, Mr Sebastian Ueckert and Dr Stefanie Hennig.

Part I: “Applied Optimal Design”

The necessity to reduce the costs of clinical trials and raising ethical constraints in study design(e.g. limited number of blood samples in paediatrics) are two of the reasons for an increasing application of population optimal design in drug development, but also in preclinical and clinical studies. Additionally, utilizing this tool to increase the understanding of the possible study outcomes and raise awareness of pitfalls in the planned study design can be beneficial. As a consequence, the value of knowledge in the field of optimal design for pharmacometrician and clinical pharmacologists is growing, too. Complex mathematical notation used in the literature often constitutes a practical obstacle to learn about optimal design methodology. This course aims at providing an introduction to optimal design, focusing on its practical application.

Goals:

After this workshop participants should be able to:

  • understand the basic theory of optimal design
  • evaluate the potential value of optimal design methodology for a project
  • recognize limits of optimal design
  • estimate the effort needed to calculate an optimal design
  • use PopED to solve basic optimal design problems

Part II: “Categorical Data Modeling”

Not only the reporting of side effects often generates categorical data (CD) but also many clinical outcomes are reported as such. Examples include Likert scores in pain or ACR values in rheumatoid arthritis. From the perspective of pharmacometrics, advances in computational capacity has led to a recent increases in the importance of models for CD. This course will equip students with the necessary tools to develop and diagnose population models for CD.

Goals

The workshop will teach participants to:

  • Understand the principles of categorical data modeling
  • Develop ordered categorical models in NONMEM
  • Develop Markov models in NONMEM
  • Generate diagnostics for categorical data models using PsN and Xpose

Required Knowledge: Participants should be familiar with the general concepts of mixed effects modelling and parameter estimation