Lloyd Wei Tat Tang is the Drug Metabolism and Disposition Highlighted Trainee Author for the September 2021 issue. He is currently a third-year PhD candidate in the Department of Pharmacy at the National University of Singapore under the tutelage of Professor Eric Chan. The DMD article that earned his selection as a Highlighted Trainee Author is titled “Infigratinib is a Reversible Inhibitor and Mechanism-based Inactivator of Cytochrome P450 3A4” and is available at https://doi.org/10.1124/dmd.121.000508.
Mr. Tang’s doctoral research focuses on the pharmacokinetic and toxicological consequences of cytochrome P450-mediated bioactivation of xenobiotics. In this publication, he and his collaborators reported the reversible noncompetitive inhibition and irreversible mechanism-based inactivation of cytochrome P450 3A4 (CYP3A4) by the fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) inhibitor infigratinib and illuminated important mechanistic insights on infigratinib’s bioactivation pathway and the molecular determinants underpinning CYP3A4’s inactivation using an integrated in vitro biochemical and in silico bioinformatics approach.
Given the relevance of CYP3A enzymes in drug metabolism coupled with the emerging role of infigratinib as a therapeutic agent for FGFR-linked cancers, findings from Mr. Tang’s study lay the groundwork for future investigation of clinically relevant drug-drug interactions between infigratinib and concomitant substrates of CYP3A4. He is now applying this framework to study the interactions of other FGFR inhibitors with cytochrome P450 enzymes and interrogating the utility of several prospective chemical strategies to mitigate these metabolic liabilities. Finally, he aspires to continue postdoctoral research in the field of drug metabolism after wrapping up his dissertation, which already includes work published in several other first-authored papers.
When not in the laboratory, Lloyd enjoys scuba diving, reading (and sometimes writing) poignant confessional poetry. He also enjoys experimenting with exotic coffee blends and different brewing methods.