Yoomin Jeon and Siun Kim were awarded the Best Oral Presentation Award at the 2021 KSCPT Conference.The Best Oral Presentation Award aims to recognize outstanding scientific papers delivered through oral presentations at the conference. The awards were given to oral presentations of the paper titled "A Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo- and Active-controlled, Escalating Single-dose Study to Evaluate Safety, Tolerability, Pharmacokinetic, and Pharmacodynamic Profiles of Subcutaneous Eflapegrastim in Healthy Japanese and Caucasians" and "An Annotated Corpus and Natural Language Processing Model for Drug Safety Information Extraction from Free-texts Reporting Adverse Events" for Yoomin and Siun, respectively. 

Yoomin presented the results of a phase 1 clinical trial evaluating the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of eflapegrastim following subcutaneous administration to healthy subjects. Eflapegrastim (Rolontis®) is a novel, long-acting Granulocyte-Colony Stimulating Factor (G-CSF) being studied as a treatment for neutropenia that utilizes Hanmi's Labscovery, a proprietary platform technology. 

Siun presented an annotated corpus for extracted Korean adverse events using free-texts from the KAERS (Korean Adverse Event Reporting System) database. To this end, Siun Kim developed deep learning models that automatically extract medication and adverse event information, cooperating with MILAB in Seoul National University.

Prof. Kyeong-Ryoon Lee lectured at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Korean Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, held in Jeju-do, Korea, November 11-13, 2021. The title of his talk was Development of Phyisologically-Based Pharmacokinetic Model for Orally-Administered Fexuprazan in Humans. In the lecture, Prof. Lee introduced the audience step-by-step to the drug development project he led in collaboration with Daewoong Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Seoul, Korea, where a PBPK model developed using pre-clinical animal data accurately predicted the PK profiles of fexuprazan, a potassium-competitive acid blocker, in humans. Prof. Lee's presentation was based on a research paper he recently published, and was well-received.

The 2020 Population Approach Group Korea (PAGK) Annual Meeting was held on November 27 with presenters attending at the WesternLife Hotel, Iksan, Jeolla-do while other participants joining the meeting on-line. The PAGK is a research group affiliated with Korean Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, of which members (currently >180) join from various sectors such as academia (clinical pharmacology, clinical medicine, and pharmacy), hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, CROs, and government agencies.

The plenary speech was delivered by Prof. Yangjin Kim, Professor at the Department of Mathematics at Konkuck University, titled “Mathematical modelling of tumor growth and signaling network, and development of anti-cancer drugs and therapeutic strategies”. The topics in the Young Researchers’ Sessions included physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model for clozapine in Korean patients with schizophrenia, misuse of the Michaelis-Menten for prediction of in vivo clearance for drugs, and microphysiological systems for predicting human pharmacokinetics.

Two PhD students of CCADD, Siun Kim and Tae Kyu Chung, presented their population pharmacokinetic and pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic modeling studies in the trainee session. Prof. Howard Lee also attended the PAGK annual meeting on-site to support and encourage Siun and Tae Kyu to expand their networks. The whole presentations of the two students can be watched at the Youtube channel of CCADD.

Prof. Howard Lee gave an invited presentation at the annual conference 2020, sponsored by the Korean Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. In his presentation, Prof. Lee summarized the various activities to develop therapeutics, mostly drug repositioning, and vaccines against the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. Prof. Lee's talk was timely in that Pfizer recently announced the extraordinary efficacy seen in their phase III clinical trial with an mRNA vaccine that they had co-developed with BioNTech, a German biotech firm. Prof. Lee also discussed how the private-public partnership to develop vaccines to prevent COVID-19 could change the horizon of new drug development post-pandemic. 

Prof. Howard Lee gave a talk at a pre-meeting workshop for the American College of Clinical Pharmacology Annual Meeting 2020 on September 16, 2020 (US EST). The title of Prof. Lee's presentation was 'Early Phase Clinical Trials in Korea'. In this talk, Prof. Lee explained how and why Korea has become one of the most attractive countries for clinical drug development, particularly during the past two decades. 

Prof. Lee also introduced the audience to some of his previous works in innovative clinical trial methodologies such as the microtracing technology, which he has spearheaded to make a useful clinical drug development tool in Korea. In association with this, Prof. Lee discussed two of his papers, one in Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, the other Clinical and Translational Science, two reputable journals in clinical pharmacology. 

Prof. Howard Lee was invited to the 2019 annual congress of the European Association for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics or EACPT2019, held on June 29 - July 2, in Stockholm, Sweden. Prof. Lee gave an overview of the current polypharmacy status in Korea. Polypharmacy, commonly defined as prescribing 6 or more drugs concomitantly on a single prescription, can make patients vulnerable to adverse drug reactions caused by drug interactions. Furthermore, polypharmacy can undermine the financial wellness of the health insurance system. 

In Korea, the proportion of polypharmacy has decreased from 65.8% in early 2000 to 43.7% in 2013. However, polypharmacy is still a big health issue in Korea, particularly in younger children (1-9 years) and the elderly. Likewise, low income is strongly associated with polypharmacy in the elderly in Korea. Currently, there is no national guideline or measure implemented to curb polypharmacy in Korea. Therefore, policies and nationwide efforts, along with educational campaigns for not only patients, but physicians, led by clinical pharmacology professionals, are to be put into practice to keep patients from unwanted health problems caused by polypharmacy and to promote optimal drug therapy. Prof. Lee's talk was well received, followed by an interesting session of discussion at the meeting. A physician in the audience asked why polypharmacy is most common in early childhood in Korea, and Prof. Lee replied, "Prescribing antibiotics and other common cold medications is the major culprit."

The reception for EACPT2019 took place at the Golden Hall, Stockholm City Center. This hall is the place for the ball after the annual Nobel Banquet in the Blue Hall at the City Center. Below are a couple of photos taken at the reception with other Korean participants.