Two University of Florida College of Pharmacy trainees received awards during the American Conference on Pharmacometrics, or ACoP, held in Aurora, Colorado, Oct. 18-21. Xuefen Yin, M.S., took home the Statistics and Pharmacometrics Special Interest Group, or SxP SIG, Award, while Hyunjae Jeong won an Abstract Trainee Award.
This marks the second time in two years that Yin, a fourth-year Ph.D. student, has been honored by the ACoP for her abstract, “Evaluation and Mitigation of Time-Dependent Confounding Effects in Conventional Exposure-Response Analyses for Oncology Drugs.” Her work studies exposure-response relationships of drugs in the body, addressing potential biases that may lead a prescriber to recommend doses that are either too low to be effective or too high to mitigate side effects. She said receiving this accolade recognizes the critical problem-solving and systematic approach she takes to pharmacometric research.
“Being recognized two years in a row underscores the continued industry interest in our research,” said Yin, who created her abstract alongside co-authors Ye Xiong, Youwei Bi, Xin Wei, Hong Zhao, Elimika PfumaFletcher, Rajanikanth Madabushi, Amal Ayyoub, Hao Zhu, Stephan Schmidt and Jiang Liu. “Our findings enable more accurate interpretations of clinical exposure–response data, and the strategies we have proposed offer practical guidance for conducting robust exposure–response evaluations to inform dose optimization, ultimately contributing to improved drug development outcomes.”
Hyunjae Jeong is a second-year Ph.D. student, and he won an Abstract Trainee Award for “Integrating Machine Learning and Magnetic Resonance Imaging Radiomics for Trajectory Modeling in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy: Explainable Artificial Intelligence to Inform Clinical Trial Design and Personalized Intervention.” His abstract was co-authored by Rebecca J. Willcocks, Glenn A. Walter, Robert A Mueller, William T. Triplett, Krista Vandenborne and Sarah Kim. Jeong’s work combines AI and pharmacometrics modeling to optimize clinical trial designs for patients with rare diseases.
“The goal is to make personalized interventions possible, especially for patients with a rare disease who are desperately hoping for a treatment. There’s a quote I always come back to: ‘Small, precise research can create a future where tens of thousands live another day.’ Ultimately, it’s about making drug development smarter and interventions more patient-focused,” Jeong said. “I’m grateful to my wonderful principal investigator, Dr. Sarah Kim, and the outstanding ImagingNMD team, who have provided guidance and support during challenging moments.”
Yin is mentored by Stephan Schmidt, Ph.D., F.C.P., the Certara Endowed Professor and director of the Center for Pharmacometrics and Systems Pharmacology, while Jeong’s faculty mentor is Sarah Kim, Ph.D., an assistant professor of pharmaceutics.