Stacey Tannenbaum

I am a 5th year PhD student in the department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Arizona, studying Pharmacokinetics with Dr. Michael Mayersohn. I received my undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University. This is my first year as a participant in the biomathematics program supported by the Flinn/IGERT initiative. My research interests lie in the areas of pharmacokinetic data analysis. I do a fair amount of pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic (PK-PD) modeling, which links time since dosing to drug concentration in the plasma to pharmacological response. These models allow prediction of response based on changes in dosing, such as amount administered or route of administration, or changes in physiology, such as renal function or cardiac function. I have worked on such models for cocaine and for cocaethylene, a drug formed within the body after coadministration of ethanol and cocaine. I have done some limited work with other kinds of pharmacokinetic models as well: population models and physiologically based models. I am also interested in allometry, the scaling of pharmacokinetic, physiological, and anatomical parameters from animal to human, based on body weight. I have used allometry to show that the hepatic extraction ratio (fraction of drug removed from the body via metabolism on each pass through the liver) is equivalent in all animals. I am also in the process of helping develop an improved drug screening method that not only confirms the ingestion of illicit drugs, but also allows the prediction of time of dosing and dose administered, all from a single timed urine sample. Since screening subjects for the use of illegal drugs is a common practice in numerous commercial, military, governmental, and legal settings, this has the potential have very important consequences. I have found my interaction with the other Flinn/IGERT Initiative students to be extremely beneficial; the collaboration with both mathematicians and biologists has allowed me to look at my work from a new perspective, and has helped me tackle some mathematical "sticking-points" in my analyses. I have seen from my work that pharmacokinetics is an ideal blend of biology and mathematics, but one that is relatively unknown outside of the field, and I am glad to be able to introduce this fascinating subject to the other members of the biomathematics group!

§ S. Tannenbaum, H. Boxenbaum, and M. Mayersohn. "Allometric Analysis of Organ Extraction Ratios." Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences., 86 (11), 1319 -1320, 1997.

§ M. Mayersohn and S. Tannenbaum. "On Reclaiming Data from the Literature: Literature Data 'R and R' (Recovery and Reanalysis)." American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education. In press.

§ H. Boxenbaum, S. Tannenbaum, F. Oleson, and M. Mayersohn. "Pharmacokinetic Tricks and Traps: Drug Dosage Adjustment in Renal Failure." The Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. In press.