Ohio State students host inaugural Cancer Bioinformatics Data Science Bootcamp

During the week of June 10-14, PharmD and PhD students hosted the inaugural Cancer Bioinformatics (CaBi) Data Science Bootcamp, a weeklong program designed to introduce STEM high school students in Central Ohio to the field of bioinformatics. 

One day, June 13, was dedicated to clinical pharmacology topics. Four graduate and professional trainees in the College of Pharmacy led this session under the guidance of Dr. Mitch Phelps, Professor in the Division of Pharmaceutics and Pharmacology. 

Nadeen Anabtawi, PharmD, a fourth-year graduate student, kicked off the morning by introducing the course participants to the fundamentals of drug pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics (PK/PD). Fourth-year graduate student Emma Montgomery and first-year graduate student Alexandra Partey, PharmD, demonstrated how pharmacologists build computational models to mimic human and animal physiology and introduced a human dataset derived from an actual, ongoing clinical trial. 

The morning was concluded with a tour of College of Pharmacy research facilities, where Dr. Dmitriy Uchenik, Director of Instrumentation, described the various facilities, equipment and instrumentation available to faculty, staff and student trainees at all levels within the college.

During lunch, trainees also learned about the college’s Bachelor of Science in Pharmaceutical Sciences (BSPS) program from BSPS Recruiter Jessica Harris. 

Jin Gyu (Jin) Kim, a third-year PharmD/PhD student, led the afternoon session with a series of hands-on exercises he had developed in RStudio, a statistical and graphical software platform, to show how clinical pharmacologists utilize quantitative, drug and biomarker concentration vs. time data to inform the computational models. 

Participants spent the remainder of the day performing the exercises under Jin’s guidance, as he demonstrated how the models are built and how they can be utilized for individualized dose optimization in patients. 

At the end of the day, the STEM high school participants left with an understanding and appreciation for how data science is utilized in the pharmaceutical sciences for translational and clinical research in drug development and optimization of therapies in cancer and other diseases.