Course description:
Biopharmaceutical principles concerning the release from dosage forms, absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion of drugs, reaction kinetics (kinetics of drug degradation in vivo and in vitro), plasma concentration-time curves, multi-dosage principles, bioavailability, bioequivalence, in vitro/in vivo correlations. Pharmacokinetic basis for the development and testing of pharmaceutical products (pharmacokinetic models and parameters). Storage conditions and their effect on stability, methods of stability testing. Controlled-release vs. immediate-release preparations. The exercises during the tutorials include the analysis of drug degradation processes, in-vitro/in-vivo correlations, parameters derived from different compartmental kinetic models, parameters for drug absorption and bioavailability
Course Aims:
This course aims at informing the students of the main pharmacokinetics parameters regarding their importance, application, factors affecting them and how to calculate them.
Accordingly, the student should know how to use blood and urine data following intravenous as well as extra- vascular administration to calculate pharmacokinetics parameters.
The student should be also able to adjust a dosage regimen regarding initial dose, maintenance dose and dosing interval as well as intravenous infusion adjustment.
The student should also study about bioavailability and its parameters e.g. Cmax, AUC and tmax and how to calculate and apply them in evaluation and optimization of dosage forms.
A goal of this course is also to make the student aware of the biological as well as physicochemical factors affecting bioavailability of pharmaceutical dosage forms including the effect of dosage form manufacturing steps and excipients.The effect of food and co-administered drugs on bioavailability is also considered.