Mission
The focus of this institute is to apply quantitative mathematical modeling and simulation techniques to problems in animal health and welfare as well as predict their impact on human health and food safety. It will specifically focus on bridging experimental data generated in laboratory studies to their application in whole animals and populations.
Disciplines involved include pharmacometrics, pharmacokinetics, computational epidemiology, molecular modeling and other areas of biomathematics with application to animal health and disease. In contrast to groups solely focused on theoretical in silico modeling, research conducted in the ICCM will involve laboratory, in vivo and field experiments to insure optimal design of the complete experimental continuum.
A second unique aspect of this Institute's mission is its focus on veterinary species, comparative medicine and animal health; a mission greatly facilitated by its location in the international Animal Health Corridor and Kansas State University's involvement in the National Biological and Agricultural Facility (NBAF) on its Manhattan campus.
The ICCM was identified by Certara, Inc. as a Phoenix Center of Excellence, its first focused solely on animal health.
Examples of the types of research to be conducted include:
- Design of integrated physiological based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models specifically for veterinary species and animal health endpoints.
- Improved determination of tissue withdrawal times of drugs in animals with disease.
- Simulation of clinical trials to optimize design of animal drugs by reducing use of animals now employed in traditional clinical trials.
- Temporal and geospatial analysis of environmental toxicant distributions.
- Developing robust approaches to extrapolate results from in vitro laboratory experiments to intact animals, with a focus on epithelial transport phenomenon and improved methods for drug delivery.
- Develop modeling approaches to predict behavior of nanomaterials in biological systems.
- Develop and refine approaches to animal-derived data modeling for the purpose of chemical risk assessment.
