2011 FRAME Annual Lecture

The speaker for the 2011 FRAME Annual Lecture was Professor Kevin Park of the MRC Centre for Drug Safety Science at the University of Liverpool. His lecture was entitled Mechanisms of adverse drug reactions: from man to molecule and back again.

He explained that Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) are a public health concern because of their prevalence in the clinic, where they can prohibit effective therapy. They are also an impediment to the development of new medicines.

The remit of the MRC Centre for Drug Safety Science is to understand the mechanisms of ADRs in man, and the Centre's philosophy is to study them from man to molecule and back again. The Centre has set out to generate non-competitive research, between academia, the pharmaceutical industry and drug regulation through the provision of focused workshops and by acting as a catalyst for national and international multi-centre collaborations.

Professor Park discussed the mechanisms involved in ADRs and illustrated his talk with examples including warfarin and paracetamol. The abstract for his talk can be seen by clicking here. His paper on the topic will be published in a future edition of ATLA.

Around 50 people attended the event at the Kennel Club in London.