Deepak Ahire is the Drug Metabolism and Disposition Highlighted Trainee Author for the March 2022 issue. He is a predoctoral trainee at the College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Washington State University, Spokane. His mentor is Dr. Bhagwat Prasad. He has five years of industrial experience in the field of drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics as a drug metabolism scientist. The DMD article that earned his selection as a Highlighted Trainee Author is titled “Interindividual Variability and Differential Tissue Abundance of Mitochondrial Amidoxime Reducing Component Enzymes in Humans” and is available at https://doi.org/10.1124/dmd.121.000805.

Mr. Ahire’s area of research is on understanding the impact of mARC enzymes and uridine diphospho-glucuronosyltransferase 2B17 (UGT2B17) inter-individual variability in drug metabolism and pharmacokinetic drug-drug interactions. His current research work focuses on the characterization of quantitative contribution and in vivo variability in these understudied drug-metabolizing enzymes. In particular, he is developing in vitro and in silico approaches to better predict the role of UGT2B17 and mARC enzymes in children and adults. He identified the ontogeny profile of the mARC enzyme among the pediatric and adult populations. His work also includes proteomics-informed in vitro to in vivo extrapolations (IVIVE) to predict inter-individual variability using proteomics-informed PBPK modeling and their expected clinical impact.

The data and model generated in Mr. Ahire’s research are applicable to predicting in vivo drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics, and drug-drug interactions of UGT2B17 and mARC substrates using physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models.

When not in the lab, Deepak enjoys playing cricket, hiking, and bike riding.