Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has become one of the greatest global threats to human health and the World Health Organization (WHO) has called for global action to tackle this crisis with the utmost urgency. If no proactive solutions are found, by 2050 it is estimated that AMR will cost the world an additional 10 million lives every year and incur a cumulative loss of US$100 trillion [1].

 

The world now faces an enormous and growing threat from the emergence of bacteria that are resistant to almost all current antibiotics. In this context, the field of pharmacometrics using mathematical models has, in recent years, emerged as an invaluable tool in academia, industry and regulatory agencies to facilitate the integration of preclinical and clinical data and to provide a scientifically based framework for designing and optimising dosing regimens.

 

In this talk, Dr Yu-Wei Lin will introduce different antimicrobial pharmacometric techniques and highlight the usefulness of pharmacometric analyses in antimicrobial research.

 

The talk will last one hour (45 minutes + 15 minutes discussion).

 

Speaker bios
Dr Yu-Wei Lin is a passionate clinical researcher/pharmacometrician whose long-term career goal is to make pioneering break-through discoveries in the treatment of life-threatening infections caused by pandrug-resistant Gram-negative pathogens. Yu-Wei holds a PhD in PharmSci from the University of Sydney and a double degree in PharmD (first class honours) and PharmSci from the University of South Australia. Currently, Yu-Wei is Co-Director and Elite Fellow of the Malaya Translational and Clinical Pharmacometrics Group, University of Malaya, and an adjunct researcher at Monash University. In addition to academic research experience, Dr Lin has industry experience in model-informed drug discovery and development (MIDD) and is currently working as a pharmacometric consultant (Associate Director of Pharmacometrics) for Certara, Australia.

 

Dr Jinxin Zhao is a postdoctoral research fellow at Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute and an adjunct senior bioinformatics advisor at Malaya Translational and Clinical Pharmacometrics Group. His research interests focus on developing novel efficacious therapies against life-threatening Gram-negative ‘superbugs’ by using microbial evolution, systems pharmacology and computational modelling. In addition to academic research roles, he is also the Chair of the ISAC Early Career Working Group, the American Society for Microbiology Young Ambassador to Australia and the AMR Insights Ambassador.

1. O'Neill, J. “Tackling drug-resistant infections globally: final report and recommendations.” (2016).