Daniel Gonzalez, Pharm.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics, received a $2 million NIH Research Project Grant for research focused on drug dosing in children with obesity.
Gonzalez’s proposal aims to find a systematic approach to the development and evaluation of physiologically-based pharmacokinetic models to help treat children with obesity. These models are mathematical constructs that incorporate physiologic and body composition changes during childhood.
“The majority of drugs prescribed to children with obesity lack recommendations for appropriate dosing for size,” Gonzalez said. “Physiologically-based pharmacokinetic models can be used to fill this knowledge gap, offering theoretical advantages over traditional modeling techniques by considering developmental physiology and body composition changes and overcoming the challenges associated with enrolling large numbers of children with obesity in clinical trials.”
Gonzalez’s approach will provide a platform to advance the evaluation of drug disposition changes in children with obesity and will help evaluate the effect of obesity in pediatric drug development.
The grant is for a total of $2,031,851.
Gonzalez joined the School in 2014. His research interests include pediatric clinical pharmacology, as well as the application of mathematical modeling and simulation techniques to characterize the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of drugs, guide dosage selection, and improve drug safety in children.