Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing lecture: Stefan Platz

Description

Dr. Stefan Platz, the senior vice president of global clinical pharmacology and safety sciences within AstraZeneca's R&D BioPharmaceuticals unit, will give a talk entitled "Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Understanding Toxicological Insights" for the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing.

Dr. Platz is responsible for the non-clinical safety assessment of all drug candidates, delivery of non-clinical and clinical bioanalysis strategies, and clinical pharmacology and pharmacometrics. He has a degree in veterinary medicine from the University of Munich and is a German-certified veterinary pathologist as well as a Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology.

Dr. Platz is particularly interested in exploring novel approaches and technologies to better predict human safety based on in vitro and in silico data. Recent investments by AstraZeneca in microphysiological systems may help to understand safety risks in patients based on a dynamic cell system mimicking full organ functionality. Together with modelling and simulation of human data, this might accelerate drug development and result in a reduction in number of animals used in preclinical testing.