CPC Mission
The mission of the Clinical Pharmacology Core Facility is to provide state-of-the-art quantitative mass spectrometry-based support to Northwestern University investigators as an integral part of bench-to-bedside drug development. The Core Facility was established to foster preclinical and clinical pharmacologic collaboration for anyone with a question that can be addressed with the resources at our disposal. To that end, the Core provides support for in vitro studies and both preclinical and clinical studies of a variety of small molecules, including, but not limited to, cancer chemotherapeutic agents, analgesics, and antidepressants. Expertise includes optimizing the design, conduct, analysis, interpretation, and reportage of pharmacokinetic studies. The Core Facility has extensive experience in biological sample preparation, quantitative mass spectrometric drug concentration measurement, and drug concentration versus time data modeling. Small molecule concentrations in plasma and other bodily fluids are measured using a SCIEX 6500 QTrap with UPLC and nano LC or an Agilent HPLC system linked to an Applied Biosystems API 3000 triple quadrupole mass spectrometer after sample preparation by, for example, solid-phase extraction. Drug concentration versus time relationships are fitted to various compartmental pharmacokinetic models using commercially available and specialized software. The pharmacokinetic models can then be used to design dosing schedules for compounds in early preclinical and clinical studies or dosing schedules for products already approved for use by the FDA that take into account the effects of drug interactions, age, sex, ethnicity, or other factors as part of developing personalized medical treatments. Read more
Required Acknowledgement
This work made use of the Clinical Pharmacology Core at Northwestern University, which has received support from the NIH (1S10OD012016-01 / 1S10RR019071-01A1), Soft and Hybrid Nanotechnology Experimental (SHyNE) Resource (NSF ECCS-1542205), the State of Illinois, and the International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN).