Editorial

Abstract

I am very pleased to announce that the Editorial Team for the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences (JPharmSci®) plans to generate a Special Issue entitled “Computational Pharmaceutical Sciences and Mechanism-based Modeling”. This Special Issue will celebrate JPharmSci®'s nearly 6 decades of contributions to mechanism-based modeling and computational pharmaceutical sciences. It will highlight the latest mechanistic modeling/computational advances as well as experimental work to test or refine these approaches across the following areas of the pharmaceutical sciences:•Mechanistic pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamics modeling applications at the cellular, organ, and system level leading to a better understanding of biological processes underlying drug (including protein) delivery, efficacy, and safety with ultimate application in clinical studies.•Dissolution, driving force, and transport considerations combined with physiological models (e.g., a physical model approach) to enable better oral bioavailability, tumor, lymphatic, and brain delivery predictions.•Fundamental models to predict bilayer and biomembrane (e.g., skin, blood–brain barrier, corneal, cell culture, and so forth) transport/binding phenomena.•Models and mechanistic-based computer simulations that enable prediction of phase miscibility, solubility/crystallization, or maintenance of supersaturation in metastable delivery systems (e.g., amorphous dispersions) during storage and after dosing.•Mechanism-based mathematical models to account for chemical or physical stability of small molecules or proteins in formulations.•Macroscopic multiphase modeling for applications in drug delivery and pharmaceutical technology. Thanks to the vision and foresight of the journal's Editors and Associate Editors and many eminent pharmaceutical scientists; JPharmSci® established a reputation starting in the 1960s for publishing very high-quality research articles using computational methods and mechanism-based modeling. In the early 1960s, pharmaceutics, then known as physical pharmacy, evolved quickly into a quantitative and mechanistic discipline. This change was led by the legendary Professor Takeru Higuchi. His influence on the evolution of physical pharmacy into modern pharmaceutics is best illustrated by 2 articles he published in JPharmSci® in the early 1960s (T. Higuchi, Rate of Release of Medicaments from Ointment Bases Containing Drugs in Suspension, J. Pharm. Sci., 50, 874-875, 1961; T. Higuchi, Mechanism of Sustained-Action Medication, J. Pharm. Sci., 52, 1145-1149, 1963). To this day, these 2 seminal articles remain among the most highly cited articles ever published in JPharmSci®. Over the next nearly 6 decades, the reach of pharmaceutics expanded to include biopharmaceutics, cellular and molecular biopharmaceutics, pharmacokinetics, physiologically based pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, pharmacometrics, pharmacogenetics, pharmacogenomics, and pharmacoproteomics. It is important to note that these are all scientific disciplines based on quantitative and mechanistic studies that utilize computational methods and mechanism-based modeling. During this same period of time, the complexity of pursuits of interest to pharmaceutical scientists expanded to include agents derived from biotechnology (e.g., proteins, peptides, antibodies, nucleic acids, vaccines) and new delivery systems that incorporate advanced principles in chemical engineering, materials science, polymer chemistry, and nanotechnology. To highlight JPharmSci®'s contributions today to the use of computational methods and mechanism-based modeling in these scientific disciplines, this Special Issue will include original scientific articles (Research Articles, Notes, Rapid Communications, and Lessons Learned) as well as Perspectives, Commentaries, Reviews, and Minireviews. If readers of this Editorial are interested in contributing to this Special Issue, please contact Gregory Amidon (geamidon@umich.edu), the Lead Guest Editor, for more details. I am pleased to announce here that in addition to Gregory Amidon (University of Michigan), the following eminent scientists have agreed to serve as Guest Editors of this Special Issue of JPharmSci®: Joseph P. Balthasar (University at Buffalo), Christel Bergstrom (Uppsala University), Shiew-Mei Huang (U.S. Food and Drug Administration), Jerry Kasting (University of Cincinnati), Filippos Kesisoglou (Merck & Co.), Johannes G. Khinast (Graz University of Technology), Donald E. Mager (University at Buffalo), Christopher J. Roberts (University of Delaware), and Lian Yu (University of Wisconsin-Madison). Finally, we anticipate that this Special Issue will be published as the January 2019 Issue of JPharmSci®.