RE: post-ACoP: How to train future pharmacometricians

Hi Holly and Steve, I think we might want to revisit the paper by Marc Gastonguay, Jeff Barrett et al regarding this. They enumerated programs that were available worldwide (although it is always changing). Their suggestion for a shared program to take advantage of different areas of expertise (and to really expose trainees to the key experts in each of the various aspects related to pharmacometrics and quantitative pharmacology) is very much along the lines of what is being proposed here. However, you have touched on some of the key issues - and these issues extend to how well aligned the various institutions are at sharing (i.e., how does one distribute resources in a shared curriculum across institutions - how is this vetted if one wants to provide an "accredited" Ph.D. degree in this area - so how are the various contributions recognized across institutions as being appropriate and sufficient to contribute to the Ph.D. from any given institution that is participating). There are already curricula established that could be used to show the core need for training across multiple sites (see the Metrum Institute curriculum - perhaps Marc can comment on this further). In addition, Jeff Barrett has incorporated into the UPENN CTSI a training program (Ph.D.) in pharmacometrics - although I believe there are additional funded needs to get this fully established and the CTSI at Indiana has created a disease modeling program that is focused on quantitative pharmacology approaches (encompassing pharmacometrics) as a key for training at least at the post-doctoral fellowship level. As for the attrition rate in academia - it is substantial - it is also viewed as quite unfriendly to this area at least in the U.S. - there are several institutions in the U.S. that I am aware of that have open faculty slots that they are unable to find qualified and willing individuals to fill. This is a significant problem that poses a challenge at least from the standpoint of U.S. institutions. The typical attrition rate in academia is about 75% (i.e., 1 in four who start as a tenure track assistant professor will succeed - it was actually lower in the school of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh). As for the suggestion regarding Bill Gates - typically the grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation focus on public health issues that affect populations in terribly underserved populations (malaria in Africa for example, HIV in the third world) so I'm not sure our current focus fits into this exactly. An issue with NSF funding is that typically (although not always - sometimes you can persuade them to produce an RFA that will allow this) any indication of applicability to biomedical sciences is not viewed positively (it usually kills the grant) - they are really focused on the very basic theoretical/fundamental types of problems where there is not an obvious application in this area. Perhaps a useful strategy would be to see if the NIH would see this shared program as something that a modified multi-institution (and international) T32 mechanism could suit. The current T32 mechanism is really focused on single institutions/departments - so this would have to be addressed with perhaps a modification of the funding mechanism that comes from the level of program/council to address this? At any rate - I welcome your comments on this. Best Regards, Rob