Predictive Toxicology in Drug Safety

According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), "developing new scientific approaches to detecting, understanding, predicting, and preventing adverse events" was a critical path to the future of drug safety. This book brings together a collection of state-of-the-art chapters, written by experts in the drug safety field. It provides information on the present knowledge of drug side effects and their mitigation strategy during drug discovery, gives guidance for risk assessment, and promotes evidence-based toxicology. Each specific area of toxicology relevant for drug discovery is discussed in detail, including theory, experimental approaches, and data interpretation supported by comprehensive up-to-date references. Many chapters provide fascinating case studies, which are of general interest for those who have basic science training and are interested in how chemicals interact with the human body.

Dr. Jinghai J. XU is currently Director of Knowledge Discovery and Knowledge Management at Merck Company, Inc. Dr. Xu has won numerous awards, including the Central Research Achievement Award and Pfizer Global Research Development Award. His most recently published book is Drug Efficacy, Safety, and Biologics Discovery: Emerging Technologies and Tools (2009). Dr. Laszlo Urban is currently Executive Director and Global Head of Preclinical Safety Profiling at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research. Dr. Urban has been actively involved in organizations such as the European Neuropeptide Club, the Society for Biomolecular Sciences, and the International Association for the Study of Pain. His most recently published work is Hit and Lead Profiling: Identification and Optimization of Drug-Like Molecules (2009).