On 17^th and 18^th September 2009, the Memtrans Workshop “Membrane transporters: In vitro models for the study of their role in drug fate” was held in Saarbrücken, Germany.

This workshop was the end of the European Memtrans project (Project No.: LHSB-CT-2006-518246) of which Across Barriers GmbH has been one of the members. Across Barriers GmbH was pleased to organize this workshop a challenge delegated to us by the coordinator Prof. Marival Bermejo-Sanz of the Universidad de Valencia in Spain.

The project partners presented their results obtained during the project term within talks and posters. As representative for all project partners Prof. Marival Bermejo-Sanz referred the results of the consortium talking on the central issue „Transport of P-gp substrates at Caco-2, MDCK-WT and MDCK-P-gp cell monolayers“.

In addition, experts from preclinical drug development working in pharmaceutical industries as Assoc. Prof. Anna-Lena Ungell (AstraZeneca, Schweden), at universities (Prof. Patrick Augustijns, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgien), or authorities referred about their work. For example Dr. Maria Prieto-Pilar of the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM), Italy, gave a principle talk about “The validation of in vitro methods”.

The workshop was open for all interested scientists and users from academia and pharmaceutical industry involved in the fields of in vitro ADME (discovery), preclinical drug development (lead optimization), formulation development and registration and provided also students of the network the possibility to present their results.

The big attendance of scientists and users from academia and pharmaceutical industry showed that the topic is not only interesting for the partners of Memtrans. The participants took benefit  of breaks and the poster session to discuss the results presented and to exchange their experiences.

Program

Prof Marival Bermejo-Sanz, Universidad de Valencia, Spain:
In vitro models for the study of their role in drug fate (FP6 LSHB-CT-2006- 518246).

Prof Marival Bermejo-Sanz, Universidad de Valencia, Spain:
Transport of pgp substrates at Caco-2, MDCK-WT and MDCK-PGP cell monolayers.

Kiril Lanevskij, Pharma Algorithms, Lithuania:
Ionization-Specific Prediction of Passive Permeability of Drugs Across Caco-2 Monolayers.