Training in systems pharmacology: predoctoral program in pharmacology and systems biology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine

Teaching and learning pharmacology in Brazil before COVID-19 pandemic: a case study in Rio de Janeiro

BACKGROUND

Knowledge of pharmacology is crucial for physicians to perform rational and safe medicine. Medical professionals are responsible for prescribing drugs and a weak performace of those can result in medication errors leading to disability, hospitalization, and death, among other situations. It occurs worldwide, including in Brazil, so that learning pharmacology impacts on public health service. We aim to investigate the current pharmacology educational practices in medical schools in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

METHODS

We surveyed 14 of 22 medical schools in Rio de Janeiro. Pharmacology teachers (n=16) and medical students (n=89) answered a semi-structured questionnaire that included questions about the staff characteristics, pharmacology content, teacher's concepts, and common practices and resources that were used in pharmacology classes.

RESULTS

Our results revealed that the medical schools had similar overall curriculums. Pharmacology teachers work more than 30hs a week (75%) and conducted both research and teaching (62.5%). We also found that the multimedia projector was the most common resource (71.9%), and passive pedagogical methodologies (e.g., expository classes) remain a current strategy in pharmacology classes (89.9%). In general, medical students are poorly motivated (55%), which may be related to their performance in assessments. In addition, students believe that pharmacology is a complex (52%) or very complex subject (46%) since for its full understanding the student needs concepts from other disciplines, which can have an impact on the performance and motivation of students. As a result, these medical students do not fully understand the integration between pharmacology's basic concepts and their clinical applications.

CONCLUSION

These data seem to demonstrate that the adopted teaching and learning pharmacology strategies and methodologies can be improved in Rio de Janeiro.

Preclinical QSP Modeling in the Pharmaceutical Industry: An IQ Consortium Survey Examining the Current Landscape

A cross-industry survey was conducted to assess the landscape of preclinical quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) modeling within pharmaceutical companies. This article presents the survey results, which provide insights on the current state of preclinical QSP modeling in addition to future opportunities. Our results call attention to the need for an aligned definition and consistent terminology around QSP, yet highlight the broad applicability and benefits preclinical QSP modeling is currently delivering.

Systems biology--biomedical modeling

Because of the complexity inherent in biological systems, many researchers frequently rely on a combination of global analysis and computational approaches to gain insight into both (i) how interacting components can produce complex system behaviors, and (ii) how changes in conditions may alter these behaviors. Because the biological details of a particular system are generally not taught along with the quantitative approaches that enable hypothesis generation and analysis of the system, we developed a course at Mount Sinai School of Medicine that introduces first-year graduate students to these computational principles and approaches. We anticipate that such approaches will apply throughout the biomedical sciences and that courses such as the one described here will become a core requirement of many graduate programs in the biological and biomedical sciences.