Simulation and prediction of in vivo drug metabolism in human populations from in vitro data.

The perceived failure of new drug development has been blamed on deficiencies in in vivo studies of drug efficacy and safety. Prior simulation of the potential exposure of different individuals to a given dose might help to improve the design of such studies. This should also help researchers to focus on the characteristics of individuals who present with extreme reactions to therapy. An effort to build virtual populations using extensive demographic, physiological, genomic and in vitro biochemical data to simulate and predict drug disposition from routinely collected in vitro data is outlined.