Pharma, Pharmaceutics and Biotechnology Conference

Pharmacotherapeutics is that branch of pharmacology that studies the applications of drugs in terms of therapeutic concern and their impact on disease control. In this session, you will learn the principles of pharmacotherapeutics as they apply to infective diseases, with focus on drug treatment and optimal patient outcomes. The entire groundwork of pharmacotherapeutics is built on the tenets of drug interactions with the body, which include pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. The former concerns what happens to the drug over time; it primarily includes absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion.

The latter speaks about what the drug does and how it works. Both concepts are fundamental to determining the appropriate dosing regimen as well as maximizing therapeutic efficacy with potential minimization of adverse effects. A comprehensive knowledge of the pathogen to be treated as well as that of the characteristics of a drug and the needs of an individual patient is desired to achieve effective pharmacotherapy.

In infectious diseases, therefore, clinicians are ought to consider susceptibility of the pathogen, drug resistance, and the general condition of the patient in selection of proper therapy. Since the incidence of multidrug-resistant pathogens is increasing in recent times, treatment strategies must progressively be tailored to individual patient profiling and susceptibility patterns.

Therapeutic drug monitoring refers to the measurement of drug levels in the blood to maintain the required levels of drugs within narrow therapeutic indices. One fundamental concept in the application of pharmacotherapeutics is therapeutic drug monitoring, especially with drugs having narrow therapeutic indices.

This process aims at preventing the toxicity from drugs while maintaining their effectiveness against causative infections. This encapsulates an important aspect of pharmacotherapeutics in evidence-based medicine, where clinicians make evidence-based decisions for the treatment of patients based on the best available current evidence and expert consensuses, mostly dictated by clinical guidelines in the management of diseases.

Efficacy and safety are to be evaluated both in randomized controlled trials and observational studies. The third area deals with personalized medicine, which is a new trend in pharmacotherapy involving genetic and molecular profiling to administer drug therapies to specific patients.

It may result in treatments that prove to be more effective and reduce the adverse drug reactions that commonly affect such patients and therefore benefit the patient in general. This session is going to arm participants with a broad overview of pharmacotherapeutics, setting in clear relief the importance of optimizing drug therapy of infectious diseases.

This session will explore concepts in effective pharmacotherapy, the role of TDM and how personalized medicine could help take the practice to a higher level regarding improvement of patient care.