Breaking Down Barriers to Effective Patient Care.

The theme for the 2018 ASCPT Annual Meeting is "Breaking Down Barriers to Effective Patient Care." This theme refers to the essential contributions of clinical pharmacology to the development of today's discovery into tomorrow's medicine. The various subdisciplines within clinical pharmacology serve to move molecules through the various stages of drug development and also refine or expand use of the drug postapproval. The wide range of topics covered by the 2018 Annual Meeting scientific program demonstrates the breadth of clinical pharmacology's impact. Because of new methods being developed to identify drug targets, medicines are being developed for patients with rare diseases. Biomarkers and diagnostic tools are advancing the development of drugs for neurodegenerative disorders, cancer, and many other diseases. Preclinical data are playing a key role in informing the quantitative clinical pharmacology of drugs, especially antimicrobials, and animal efficacy data are pivotal for drugs that are developed and approved under the animal rule. The use of pharmacogenomics, model-based drug development, informatics, and identification and evaluation of subgroups are key topics. With our focus on the patient, the Annual Meeting, and this issue of Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, will highlight the many innovative ways that current clinical pharmacology investigations are attempting to dissolve barriers to effective patient care.