XEN and the Art of Pharmacology : New Learning from

the future development of effective and safe antiretroviral agents—and the continued study of ways to maximize the utility of currently available therapies—are highly dependent on a scientific field that has evolved in recent years at an incredible rate: pharmacology. While The prn Notebook has published numerous articles focusing on the issues of pharmacokinetics (pk) and pharmacodynamics (pd) as they apply to antiretroviral therapy, very little has been published in these pages regarding the actual pharmacologic mechanisms responsible for hostand drug-related pk and pd variability. To help explain the science of drug metabolism and drug interactions—and how it is translating into new treatment strategies—prn turned to Dr. Charles Flexner, a longtime supporter and friend, to discuss the latest developments and future directions of pharmacology in the much larger arena of hiv treatment research.