Transcript:
Hello, and welcome to Certara Talks. I’m Brandon Underwood, senior marketing manager at Certara. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Rick Degreef, who is a senior vice president and the global lead of quantitative science services at Certara. Welcome, Rick.
You’re just back from the PAGE meeting in Rome where you could see the full scientific might of Certara was on display, with thirty seven posters, thirty five pharmacometric studies, two workshops, and one abstract presentation that I’ll ask you to elaborate on in a moment. But first, I’d like to get your overall thoughts on PAGE and the impactful work that your colleagues shared.
Yes. PAGE is a is a very important event for us, every year, and we try to to be there with a large team. And, also, they share we were there with a significant presence, as you mentioned.
And we were able to showcase the breadth of pharmacometrics capabilities that that we have within Certara, also in in the presentations, that that we put forward the process that we presented, such as, for example, projects where we supported, late stage development and regulatory sufficient, for for our clients, but also, examples in more early stages, particularly in oncology.
Also, what I very much enjoyed was to see several examples of model based meta analysis, that we have done, together with our clients to inform key decisions on their programs.
So, altogether, a very nice comprehensive view of of what we have to offer at Certara and how that ties into pharmacometrics, as a science and, and really a a very, impactful component of drug development.
Thank you.
It’s a great summary, and we’ll get into some of the details now. So the organizers of PAGE selected, regulation and the use of real world data in pharmacometrics as the special abstract topic for this year’s meeting. And I imagine that choice to highlight, that topic is no surprise to you considering the inclusion of real world data in pharmacometrics, analyses at Certara is becoming more and more common.
Yeah. Absolutely.
The the increasing awareness that there that there is a disconnect between clinical trial data and real world data And in terms of the drug’s performance that we see in patients in clinical trials and in, the real world, it becomes more and more common to to consider the use of real world data in pharmacometrics analysis, for a very good reason, I would say.
So I mentioned an abstract presentation earlier in reference to the rather elegant work our own Sameer, Muksoffy, did in collaboration with Roche. Can you tell me more about Sameer’s presentation and the importance of that work?
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. What Sameer presented, was essentially an extensive modeling and simulation framework that was developed to describe the effects of a continuous erythropoietin receptor activator, in used in pediatric chronic kidney disease.
So the goal was to optimize those regimens in pediatrics, for this product and, those regimens were quite intricate because they were response based. So dose was adjusted based on the response to the treatment, and that simulation framework could describe that not just the in the clinical trial context, but it was then also validated with real world data. So showing, that this, extensive modeling and simulation framework could really describe responses to this treatment in the real world, and that then supported the approval, of this product in pediatric population. So a great piece of work, that I think, shows the the value of applying pharmacometrics also to characterize real world data.
Thank you.
I will say it feels as though you can’t spend, five minutes in casual conversation without broaching the subject of artificial intelligence, and and transformation is happening. You’ll get no argument from me there, but in some cases, the reality is still catching up to the hype. I’d like to know if you’re optimistic about the impact of AI and machine learning in pharmacometrics and if there were any sessions at PAGE you found particularly interesting on those topics.
Absolutely.
The the first session of the whole conference actually was developed with, to, artificial intelligence and machine learning. I showed various examples of of how these methods can apply. But can be applied within, pharmacometrics, in the modeling itself, for example, by, replacing or feeding, mechanistic model components with neural networks.
But but one presentation that actually, I think, the whole audience found quite thing was one where PMX bots were used to support pharmacometricians in their day to day work and taking over parts of the pharmacometrics workflow and making streamlining and making it more efficient and quick.
So there’s definitely a lot of opportunities there to make our work more efficient as farm concentrations while still being in the leads and in the driver’s seat as farm concentrations, of course, but being supported by maybe even a whole group of of bots that can do different tasks, that you otherwise would need need to do yourself.
And why now we’ll hear more about that in the coming, weeks and months. I’m sure that will be discussed that, at PAGE as well next year. So I’d be short changing our audience if I didn’t ask about the annual Certara tradition at PAGE, the European football pharmacometrics collective tournament. And it had to be more meaningful this year with the Euro twenty twenty four championships happening in parallel.
So I have two two things for you. Did you participate in the event and just your overall thoughts? And then I’m gonna put you on the spot, to pick a winner for the Euros. We only have twelve teams left, so the field’s narrowed down a bit for you.
Okay. Yeah. I I will be honest. I participated as a spectator, so I was there on the sideline this year. I’ve I’ve been on the pitch in in prior years.
It was a great event. The location was beautiful, and, actually, we were able to have dinner really next to the pitch with with all the players and spectators. So it was really a a funny event as usual.
As to euro twenty twenty four, well, I wouldn’t be Dutch if I wouldn’t be voting for the ORH team even though they’re playing horrible thus far.
It will probably be between Spain and Netherlands. And if that’s the final, well, then we’ll see the best they win, hopefully.
Okay. I I like that prediction.
And you you were you know, you didn’t go with England, which, I don’t blame you after that showing, you know, yesterday.
So so, Rick, I really enjoyed hearing about PAGE and all the incredible, work from our team that was highlighted in Rome. And for a full rundown of the work Certara’s team shared at PAGE, you could take a look at the conferences, section on Certara dot com. And if you’d like to learn more about the work Rick and his team are doing, you’ll find that under, modeling and simulation on our website. So I’m Brandon Underwood, and this has been Certara Talks.
We’ll see you next time.