Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics: 2020 in Review.

Abstract

A year ago, former editor-in-chief Scott Waldman, MD, handed over the Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics (CPT) leadership baton to a new editorial team. To mark the occasion, a themed issue “Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics 2030” was published at the start of the year in which the team shared its vision for the journal, illustrated by a series of perspectives from global leaders across the discipline from academia, regulatory agencies, and pharma.1 In addition to the disciplines where CPT has traditionally been the leading publication in the field, we identified new and emerging areas for the journal to focus on, such as precision medicine, data science, global heath and special populations, and novel modalities and therapeutic approaches. It was therefore not a coincidence that the second themed issue of this year was dedicated to “Data Science,” which brought together clinical pharmacology with science and methodology from areas like artificial intelligence, machine learning, real-world data, and large-scale multi-omics.2 This was also the first example of an issue fully dedicated to a particular theme, including all original research articles. It also introduced the first CPT Tutorials,3, 4 a new article type for the journal providing practical educational material on tools, methodologies, and approaches in clinical pharmacology5-7 (Table 1). The most recent themed issue “Therapeutic Innovations in Oncology” was again fully dedicated to a single topic and gave the readers “a tour of selected innovations in precision medicine, model-informed drug discovery and development frameworks, and the evolving clinical trial and regulatory landscape that have nurtured patient-focused oncology research, development, and clinical practice.”8 One change implemented this year was that themed issues will appear less frequently than before, but will be as much as possible aligned with the topic and include a broader range of article types, including original research. Another important new feature is that contributions will not be by invitation only and open calls for papers will be issued.1 The 2021 themed issues will be “Precision Dosing,” “Anti-Infectives,” and “Pharmacogenetics & Pharmacogenomics.” For the “non-themed” issues, the editorial team selected papers on key topics to be highlighted on the cover (Figure 1) and in editorials, such as regulatory sciences,9 novel technologies for mechanistic understanding of drug exposure and response,10 precision medicine of oral coagulants,11 induced pluripotent stem cells,12 and the role of the microbiome in central-nervous system clinical pharmacology.13 The October issue was dedicated to CPT’s Editor Emeritus, Marcus M. Reidenberg, MD,14 who died in March this year and served the journal for 17 years. Under his leadership, CPT became the premier publication in the discipline. Little did I know how the world would change when I wrote the editorial on finding new drugs for infectious diseases for the February 2020 issue,15 inspired by the analyses from DiMasi et al. at Tufts University.16 My pre-coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) conclusion was that “If anything, the analysis by DiMasi and colleagues underscores that from a scientific and clinical perspective drug development in infectious diseases should be relatively successful. Clinical pharmacologists should be at the forefront of converting this opportunity into reality through application of existing and emerging innovative drug development paradigms in the context of global health.” A few weeks after this publication, the world went into lockdown, and we and many other asked ourselves the question if COVID-19 would be a defining moment for clinical pharmacology.17 I suppose all we can say at present is that time will tell, but the hope is that whatever we learn will have a positive impact on effectiveness and speed of drug development for infectious diseases that goes well beyond COVID-19. As a reminder, DiMasi et al. found that current clinical trial times for infectious diseases range from 2–8 years.15, 16 The journal experienced an unprecedented number of submissions related to COVID-19 and we are grateful and indebted to the large number of members of our Editorial Board and peer reviewers who have been instrumental in helping us select the most impactful science and maintaining the highest standards in a rapidly moving environment.18 We look forward to working with them, our authors, readers, and many others to continue to fulfil CPT’s mission to be the leading journal for clinical pharmacology and therapeutic innovations, transforming the development and utilization of medicines across all diseases for all patients. No funding was received for this work. The author declared no competing interests for this work.