Pharmacokinetics, Pharmacodynamics, and Drug Disposition

During the last decade, the application of pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic modeling techniques has become an increasingly important aspect of contemporary clinical psychopharmacology (1–5). These techniques have been applied during the process of development of new drug entities as well as for the improved understanding of the clinical actions of drugs that are already marketed. Techniques for the study of drug metabolism in vitro have advanced substantially during the last decade, and now are an integral component of preclinical drug development and the link to subsequent clinical studies of drug metabolism and disposition. Kinetic-dynamic modeling techniques have been combined with in vitro metabolism procedures and in vitro–in vivo mathematical scaling models to provide insight into the general problem of pharmacokinetic drug interactions in clinical psychopharmacology (6–9). This chapter reviews some advances in pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and drug metabolism, along with methodologic applications to selected problems in clinical psychopharmacology.