Certara, a provider of biosimulation software for drug development, has appointed Andrzej Kierzek as head of systems modelling in its Simcyp Quantitative Systems Pharmacology (QSP) Group. He joins Certara from the University of Surrey in the UK, where he served as professor of systems biology.
Certara established its QSP group with the acquisition of XenologiQ, a UK-based QSP consultancy, in December 2015. With the development of QSP, Cetara aims to bridge the gap between pharmacometric modelling and systems biology. In combination with physiologically-based pharmacokinetics (PBPK), QSP forms the basis for precision medicine and can assist in identifying the best dose and combination of drugs for an individual patient. QSP is expected to have an immediate impact not only in large therapeutic areas like oncology, immunology/inflammation and cardiometabolic diseases, but also in rare diseases and safety/toxicology.
Steve Toon, president of Simcyp commented: 'QSP is a relatively new discipline with the potential to dramatically improve pharma R&D productivity. We are delighted to have a systems modeller of Andrzej’s caliber join our rapidly-growing QSP team. This is an incredibly exciting stage in the development and adoption of QSP and we aim to have all the brightest minds on board.’”
Professor Kierzek has 20 years’ experience developing computer simulations of biological systems. He co-presented the first dynamic simulations, including regulatory mechanisms and a genome scale metabolic network, in a human cell. He is now working to apply this method of mechanistic modelling to cancer. He also developed the software to create computer simulations of genome scale metabolic networks in bacterial pathogens. Professor Kierzek has had 50 papers published to date in life sciences journals.
