Abstract:
Over the past 15 years, a number of important human drug transporters have been identified.  They are expressed in various tissues and have broad substrate specificity.  It has becoming increasingly recognized that they have an important role in drug absorption, distribution, metabolism and elimination (ADME).  Functionally, drug transporters can act as uptake or efflux transporters.  P-glycoprotein (Pgp), encoded by MDR1, is one of the best characterized efflux transporters.  It is believed that Pgp affects oral absorption, biliary and renal clearance, and brain uptake of drugs.  Organic anion transporting polypeptides (OATPs) are a superfamily of uptake transporters.  OATP1B1 and OATP1B3 are liver specific transporters, thus they can affect drug elimination from liver.  Transporters are often working in concert with each other or with drug metabolizing enzymes and can affect the pharmacokninetics and pharmacodynamics of drugs, and can cause drug-drug interactions.  In this seminar, an overview of drug transporter role in ADME and techniques to study drug transporters will be discussed.

Brief Biography for Dr. Guo:
Dr. Ailan Guo received her Ph. D. in plant pathology from Kansas State University.  She obtained her postdoctoral training in Waksman Institute of Rutgers University and then worked as a research scientist in Department of Pharmaceutics at Rutgers University where she studied the impact of drug transporters on absorption and efflux of anti-HIV and anti-cancer drugs.  In 2001, she joined the Discovery Pharmacology of Hoffmann-la Roche.  Currently, Dr. Guo is in Non-Clinical Drug Safety at Roche and her group provides in vitro support for the evaluation of preclinical and clinical drug candidates.  

Seminar Series Coordinators:
Dr. Zeyuan Qiu       Zeyuan.qiu@njit.edu              973-596-5357
Dr. Sergiu Gorun    Sergiu.m.gorun@njit.edu       973-569-6595