Preliminary in vitro studies show that ADPDI-1 is effective in inhibiting the plaque (see picture to the right) development but there is some concern that drug metabolites may cause liver and kidney damage. Since there is no good animal model for plaque development with which the company can test the drug, and since the FDA will not allow human testing, the chief of the Drug Development Group comes to you and your biomathematics team to develop a computer model that can be used to study the distribution of both the primary drug ADPDI-1 and its metabolites in the human.

What do you do? What things are important to include in such a model? What things do you think you need to know to develop an effective mathematical/computer model that could be used to study the drug’s metabolic properties? How would you test such a model (prediction vs. reality)? Alzheimer Images

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