Update: the below history of PAGANZ has now been updated and published as a perspective piece in CPT-PSP:
“Pharmacometrics in Australasia—Twenty Years of Population Approach Group of Australia and New Zealand”
In the Beginning…
Written by Nick Holford, Department of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
• Back in the days of Gondwanaland there was a small group of scientists who studied the effects of fermented Potions and made Astrological predictions under their influence
• They called themselves PAGONDS
Some time later…
• 1976 ADIS (Auckland, NZ) starts “Clinical Pharmacokinetics”
– First article “Clinical Pharmacokinetics in Infants and Children” Rane & Wilson
• 1983
– Don Perrier, Head of Dept Pharmacy, Dunedin
– Gibaldi & Perrier textbook
• Nick Holford (University of Auckland)
– MKMODEL for Apple II and the new IBM PC AT
• “Late 1980s”
– Robert Purves (University of Otago)
– Minim for Apple Macintosh
• 1995
– Steve Duffull (Christchurch)
– SEBA-GEN (sequential Bayes algorithm for gentamicin)
Dawn of the Population Approach
• 1989
– Nick Holford returns to San Francisco on sabbatical
– Learns basics of NM-TRAN/NONMEM
• 1993
– First NONMEM course in Auckland
– PANZAS vs PAGANZ (NZ vs OZ!)
• 1997
– DIA Meeting on Population Approach in Canberra
• 1999
– PAGONDS become PAGANZ
The First PAGANZ Meeting Auckland 1999
• Combining PK and PD (Janet Wade)
– PPPD is still the state of the art
• Automated Covariate Models (Mats Karlsson)
– Not much used anymore
• Disease progression (Nick Holford)
– Still progressing…
• Population PKPD Problems (Diane Mould)
– There are always problems!
• Paediatric pain and paracetamol (Brian Anderson)
– Brian got his PhD and is still working on the same topic.
Population Analysis WorkShops (PAWS)
• Beginners NONMEM Workshop
– Every year since 1999
• Intermediate Workshop
– Deliberately “Intermediate” because Stuart Beal said nobody was smart enough to do an “Advanced” NONMEM course.
– World leading in topics e.g. WinBUGS and NONMEM (Steve Duffull & Nick Holford) subsequently also run at PAGE
Global Outreach
• South Africa
– PAGANZA (2002)
• Singapore
– PAGANZ (2007)
– Lai San Tham!
• India
– PAGIN (2008)
• ISoP
– Partner society (2012)
Pharmacometric Tools
• University of Auckland
– Wings for NONMEM (Nick Holford)
– NextDose (Sam Holford)
• University of Queensland
– Australian Centre for Paediatric PK (Bruce Charles)
– TCIWorks (Steve Duffull, Carl Kirkpatrick)
• University of Otago
– WinPOPT (Steve Duffull)
• University of South Australia
– Australian Centre for Pharmacometrics (David Foster)
• Monash University
– TCIWorks (Carl Kirkpatrick)
Pharmacometrics in Oceania
Map supplied by Bruce Charles
Pharmacometrics in Australasia – The early years
An account of the early years written by Bruce Charles.
[box type=”download”]Pharmacometrics in Australasia – The early years[/box]