Back in the early 2000s, I worked a couple of years as a senior scientist at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. So it was nice to revisit the area for the recent Seventh American Conference on Pharmacometrics (ACoP7).

A lot has changed in Seattle in the last 15 years. The area around South Lake Union, near where I lived, has been turned into a major hub for biotechnology and the life sciences. Amazon is constructing a new campus featuring giant ‘biospheres’ which look like nothing I have ever seen.

Attending the conference, though, was like a blast from the past – because unlike the models used by architects to design their space-age buildings, the models used in pharmacology have barely moved on.

While there were many interesting and informative presentations and posters, most of these involved relatively simple models based on ordinary differential equations, very similar to the ones we were developing at the ISB years ago. The emphasis at the conference was on using models to graphically present relationships, such as the interaction between drugs when used in combination, and compute optimal doses. There was very little about more modern techniques such as machine learning or data analysis.

There was also little interest in producing models that are truly predictive. Many models were said to be predictive, but this just meant that they could reproduce some kind of known behaviour once the parameters were tweaked. A session on model complexity did not discuss the fact, for example, that complex models are often less predictive than simple models (a recurrent theme in this blog, see for example Complexity v Simplicity, the winner is?). Problems such as overfitting were also not discussed. The focus seemed to be on models that are descriptive of a system, rather than on forecasting techniques.

The reason for this appears to come down to institutional effects. For example, models that look familiar are more acceptable. Also, not everyone has the skills or incentives to question claims of predictability or accuracy, and there is a general acceptance that complex models are the way forward. This was shown by a presentation from an FDA regulator, which concentrated on models being seen as gold-standard rather than accurate (see our post on model misuse in cardiac models).

Pharmacometrics is clearly a very conservative area. However this conservatism means only that change is delayed, not that it won’t happen; and when it does happen it will probably be quick. The area of personalized medicine, for example, will only work if models can actually make reliable predictions.

As with Seattle, the skyline may change dramatically in a very short time.