Masud Parvez is the Drug Metabolism and Disposition Highlighted Trainee Author for the August 2021 issue.  Dr. Parvez is a postdoctoral trainee in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Washington State University.  His mentor is Dr. Bhagwat Prasad.  He earned a Ph.D. in pharmacology from Inje University, South Korea. The DMD article that earned his selection as a Highlighted Trainee Author is titled “Quantitative Investigation of Irinotecan Metabolism, Transport, and Gut Microbiome Activation” and is available at https://doi.org/10.1124/dmd.121.000476.

Dr. Parvez’s area of research is understanding the impact of an interplay between drug transporters and metabolic enzymes on drug disposition, pharmacokinetic drug-drug interactions, and in vitro to in vivo extrapolations. His current work is focused on characterizing the individual contributions of drug transporters and enzymes to the disposition of a drug and metabolites, to understand tissue disposition mechanisms. He utilizes proteomics-informed in vitro to in vivo extrapolations (IVIVE) to predict tissue drug/metabolite exposure and their anticipated clinical impact. His work also includes identifying an ontogeny profile of the drug-metabolizing enzyme and transporter protein abundances among the pediatric population and developing a physiologically based pharmacokinetic model to understand developmental and interindividual pharmacokinetic variability.

The anticipated impact of Dr. Parvez’s current research is a better understanding of the interindividual pharmacokinetic variability, drug-drug interactions, and drug toxicity in the clinics.  In a broader sense, the IVIVE model based early tissue exposure prediction will be greatly helpful in the drug developmental process specifically in the first-in-human clinical study design.

When not in the lab, Masud enjoys traveling, reading, and playing.