Six undergraduate students (Sung Jong Kim, Hwe Won Kim, Jinyeong Yang, Song Yeon Oh, Chae Jeong Lee, and Yura Hwang) joined CCADD for the 2020 Winter Smart Internship, and they will spend the next 8 weeks in exploring the research environment at CCADD while having opportunities to participate in the ongoing research projects.

Sung Jong Kim is a fourth-year undergraduate student at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, double majoring in Molecular Biotechnology and English-Korean Interpretation and Translation Studies. Studying biology and biotechnologies, Sung Jong has developed a broad interest in pharmacology and computer science. He is looking forward to learning NONMEM, an analysis program for pharmacokinetic pharmacodynamic (PKPD) modeling, during his internship program.

Song Yeon Oh is also a senior student at HanKuk University of Foreign Studies, and has studied Environmental Science. Song Yeon's research interests include applying artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into the pharmaceutical area to make drug development processes more efficient. During the internship program, she wants to learn methods to analyze medical data using computer language, such as Python and R, by participating in the CCADD's current projects.

Chae Jeong Lee is a second-year student at HanKuk University of Foreign Studies, majoring in Biomedical Engineering and Computer and Electronic Systems Engineering. Being familiar with C and Python, Chae Jeong wants to participate in CCADD's current AI projects such as those awarded by National Institute of Food Drug Safety Evaluation (NIFDS) and South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy (MOTIE). Through this winter internship program, she is looking forward to learning R to improve her coding skills.

Hwe Won Kim is a fourth-year undergraduate student at Konkuk University. She studies Converged Material Engineering and Environmental Engineering. Prior to the internship program at CCADD, Hwe Won worked as an intern researcher in the Department of Stem cell and Regenerative Biotechnology laboratory and has become interested in pharmacology and AI technologies. Through the internship program, she is looking forward to learning the basics of clinical pharmacology and AI algorithms applicable to pharmaceutical area.

Jinyeong Yang is a second-year student at College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Seoul National University. Jinyeong was involved in research project project to develop a liquid bandage for patients with atopy to prevent potential secondary infections. Through her past experience, Jinyeong has become more interested in PK, PD, and development process of a drug. She is looking forward to learning the pharmacology and drug development process, as well as experiencing the research environment in graduate school. 

Yura Hwang is a senior student at Pusan University with a major in Molecular Biology and a minor in Chemistry. Previously, Yura worked in PRG S&T, a pharmaceutical start-up, where she has developed an interest in theoretical and computational methods to describe variability in PK. She is looking forward to learning NONMEM during her internship program.

This 2020 winter internship program will provide participants with opportunities to learn clinical pharmacology, machine learning algorithms, and computer languages for data analysis as shown below. CCADD wholeheartedly welcomes the 6 intern students, and hopes them to enjoy, learn, and experience as much as they want and can during the rest of their internship programs.

The 2019 Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) Korea International Symposium was held on December 12-14 at Konjiam Resort, Korea. The symposium gathered nearly 400 participants from nine different countries, clearly showing a growing interest in the OHDSI community. The main session on the second day was followed by full-day tutorial workshops on the first day. The main session began with a warm welcome by Prof. Rong Min Baek, the Chairman of the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Seoul National University College of Medicine, followed by an overview of the Korean OHDSI journey by Prof. Rae Woong Park, the Director and Professor at the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Ajou University School of Medicine. Other topics in the main session included an introduction to the European Health Data & Evidence Network (EHDEN) project, the OHDSI Initiative, and the FeederNet platform. The key message from all these presentations was on generating reproducible and reliable evidence from the existing clinical data standardized by the OHDSI common data model (CDM).  

Among three parallel sessions, 'Clinical trials in OHDSI' session was newly introduced this year. This parallel session purely focused on clinical trials, which consisted of the following three invited talks: 'Introduction to clinical trials', 'Smart User-friendly CDM-based Clinical trial dEsign Support System, SUCCESS', and 'OHDSI use case: clinical trial feasibility'. Charles Joochul Lee, a general manager of Selvas AI Inc., and Ms. Yoomin Jeon were invited to give a talk on the SUCCESS project, a CDM-based simulation system to assist clinical trial feasibility and designing clinical trials. Mr. Lee introduced the principles behind why and how SUCCESS was developed. Mr. Lee then gave a demonstration of SUCCESS system. To provide a better understanding of how a CDM-based simulation system can be implemented, Yoomin spoke about a CDM-based virtual clinical trial project (from the 2nd Korea Clinical Datathon) as a case study. Using the Ajou University Hospital CDM real-world data, her team has successfully shown that patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus, who are treated with metformin, sulfonylurea, and/or dipeptidylpeptidase-4 inhibitors (DPP4i), can benefit from add-on sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) treatment in terms of both additional efficacy and comparable safety. Based on the analysis using this CDM data, adding an SGLT2i has shown an additional efficacy and comparable safety profiles to those identified with SGLT2i in actual clinical trials. Yoomin concluded her talk by stating that exploring the efficacy and safety of the proposed treatment using simulation experiments can help design an optimized clinical trial, which may increase the chance of success in the clinical trials. The talks by Mr. Lee and Yoomin were well received, and an active and interesting Q & A session was followed.

Yes, Boca Raton is in Florida, the average temperature of which in December is 24 degrees Celsius! Several CCADD members including Prof. Lee, Yoomin Jeon, Taekyu Chung, Siun Kim and Junsik Moon attended the Eighteenth International Conference on Machine Learning(ML) and Applications (ICMLA) held at Marriott Hotel, Boca Raton, Florida, USA on December 16-19, 2019. Like the subtropical climate of the city, the conference was also full of passionate researchers and practitioners presenting their latest achievements and innovations in the area of ML.

Started by three excellent keynote lectures, each day in the morning except for the first day, concerning the robustness/efficiency of data management, which was also aimed to attract researchers and application developers from a wide range of ML related areas, the conference covered not only an urgent need for machine learning to address new challenges from the recent emergence of Big Data processing but also theoretical research/application in ML.

Prof. Howard Lee and CCADD’s members were able to garner meaningful insight in each section describing machine learning techniques applied to real-world problems and interdisciplinary research involving machine learning in various fields such as medicine, biology, industry, security, and education. This gained insight was partly assisted by ‘Artificial Intelligence for New Drug Development and Clinical Application’, a course organized by Prof. Lee and taught by CCADD members last semester. Joining the conference, Prof. Lee seemed to be reinforced by the insight that could refine and strengthen the scope, direction, and emphasis of the research for CCADD.

After the conference, CCADD’s members visited Key West, the continental southernmost point, which is the starting point of U.S. Route 1, the longest north-south road in the United States. Not only enjoying classy seafood cuisine and stunning scenery while on road, but they had a chance to share interesting ideas as to the new research direction of CCADD.

Two senior undergraduate students, Yonghan Kwon and Won Jeong Go, joined CCADD for the summer internship program on July 1, 2019, which will end in eight weeks.

Yonghan has studied applied statistics and taken several data mining and machine learning classes at Kyonggi University. Being familiar with R and Python, Yonghan wants to improve his coding/programming skills by participating in several CCADD's ongoing AI projects awarded by the National Institute of Food Drug Safety Evaluation (NIFDS) and South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy (MOTIE).

Won Jeong has studied at Handong University with a major in life science and a minor in computer science. Won Jung's research interests include genomic analysis for the safe use of drugs, and is happy to work with Dr. Jeong-An Gim in the pharmacoepigenomic study of tacrolimus. She hopes to learn essential concepts necessary for the analysis of genomic data using computational techniques.

CCADD welcomes Yonghan and Won Jeong, and hopes them to enjoy the rest of their internship programs.

Prof. Howard Lee was invited to speak at an educational seminar and an international symposium, both sponsored by the Pharmaceutical Society of Korea, in association of its spring convention, held in the Millennium Hilton Seoul, Korea, on April 25-26. The PSK is an academic organization representing pharmacy since its foundation in 1946, which has grown into the biggest institution for pharmacists in Korea. In the educational seminar, Prof. Lee talked about how bio-big data can be used for the efficient planning and conduct of clinical drug development. His talk was based on his experience and lessons learned in the two recent research projects that CCADD led and will be actively participating, i.e., ACTRiS and SUCCESS. His presentation has received media attention as summarized in a newspaper article.   

The international symposium was held on the second day of the convention. Prof. Lee introduced the audience to several possible applications of artificial intelligence (AI) to clinical trials, with a special focus on a CCADD research project using feature selection for clinical trial feasibility. This symposium was organized by Prof. Hwi-yeol Yun, Chungnam National University College of Pharmacy, a long-time friend and collaborator of Prof. Lee's.   

Two undergraduate students, Hyun Soo Kim and Jun Young Yang, joined CCADD for the winter internship program in January, 2019. The internship program will continue for eight weeks.

Hyun Soo Kim is a fourth-year undergraduate student at Inha University. He majors in statistics and has completed much of the undergraduate courses such as basic statistics and data analysis. Being familiar with Python and R, Hyun Soo plans to study machine learning and AI techniques during his internship program. He also wants to develop the domain knowledge in medical fields. 

Jun Young Yang is also a senior student at the College of Natural Science, Chung-Ang University. Jun Young has studied life sciences, developing a broad interest in pharmacology and Pharmacokinetic/Pharmacodynamic (PKPD) modeling. He is looking forward to learning NONMEM, an analysis program used for PKPD modeling, during his internship program. 

CCADD welcomes Hyun Soo and Jun Young, and hopes them to enjoy the rest of their internship programs.

On December 20, 2018, CCADD had a day-long workshop at the Yeongeon Campus. The workshop was attended not only by the existing CCADD members, but also by a new CCADD intern and a graduate student in the Interdisciplinary Program of Clinical Pharmacology at Seoul National University. The workshop included 12 presentations, the theme of which covered the history and milestones of CCADD, educational and research activities, talent acquiring strategy, homepage management, student internship experiences, communication, and teambuilding exercise. Furthermore, Professor Kyung-Sang Yu from the SNU College of Medicine and SNU Hospital (Department of Clinical Pharmacology) was invited to a special lecture session. Prof. Yu talked about the importance of e-mail as a means of business communication. He also stressed the appropriate e-mail manners in various business communication contexts.

After the workshop, CCADD members and their family members or invited friends went on a year-end dinner party, which was extended to a sleepover program. All brought a so-called 'useless' gift to the party, which as real fun. The winner of the most useless gift was Tae Chung, who received a used book named 'Sleep 2', written by Bernard Werber, but without having its first book, i.e., 'Sleep1'.

Okay, let's now look at the pictures below and you will easily notice how crazy the party was!

Prof. Howard Lee and Hyun A Lee attended the 9^th American Conference on Pharmacometrics (ACoP9), held October 7^th to 10^th, 2018, at the Loews Coronado Bay Resort near San Diego, CA, USA. ACoP is the annual scientific meeting of the International Society of Pharmacometrics (ISoP), an organization comprised individuals from around the globe from various backgrounds in pharmaceutics, engineering, statistics, and mathematics, who are passionate about advancing and promoting the field of pharmacometrics. The theme of ACoP9, "Modeling without Bounds",  means "internationalization/collaboration" and "fusion/integration" of pharmacometrics groups, methods, and tools among the fields of pharmacometrics and systems pharmacology, with more than 1,000 members from over 30 countries. Consistent with this theme, inspiring and innovative talks by the Keynote (Mr. Walter Woltosz, Simulations Plus) and the State of Art ( Prof. Andrew Lo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) speakers were presented. The titles of their speeches were "Rocket motors, Stephen Hawking, and drug development" and "p-Values vs. Patient values: An Analytic Perspective", respectively. In addition, the pre-conference program on "Digital Health Technology, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence: The Future of Clinical Trials and Informative Therapeutic Decisions?" highlighted the latest innovations and clinical applications of digital health technologies. The conference program included >100 invited lectures/presentations and over 300 posters, tutorials, pre- and post-meeting workshops, and abundant networking opportunities with attendees from around the world. 

Hyun A Lee presented a poster at the meeting that detailed the development of a physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model of YH4808, a novel potassium-competitive acid blocker to treat gastric acid related disease. In this study, the mechanistic cause of the decreased exposure YH4808 after multiple oral administration particularly at higher doses could be identified using the PBPK model.

In addition, you may want to contact Hyun A for her poster. 

Prof. Howard Lee has attended the 40th EMBC (Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference), Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, on July 17-22. The theme of the meeting was “Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future”, inspired by the 40th anniversary of the world’s largest international biomedical engineering meeting.

In the Conference, Prof. Lee co-chaired a minisymposia with Prof. Kyung-Soo Park, Yonsei University, entitled 'Pharmacometrics Approaches & Novel Drug Delivery Systems in Pharmaceutical Engineering'. Prof. Lee also spoke about the ACTRiS project at the minisymposia, particularly with a strong emphasis on the importance of precision feasibility for clinical trials. The one-page abstract for Prof. Lee's presentation that he co-authored with one of his students, Yoomin Jeon, can be downloaded below.