Safety pharmacology during the COVID pandemic

Abstract

This editorial summarizes the content of the current themed issue of J Pharmacol Toxicol Methods derived from the 2020 Annual Safety Pharmacology Society (SPS) meeting that was held virtually September 14-17, 2020 due to the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic. A selection of articles arising from the virtual meeting is summarized. Like previous years they continue to reflect current areas of innovation in SP including new methodologies to predict human safety, best practices for IKr current measurement, and best practice considerations for the conduct of in vivo nonclinical QT studies. The meeting included scientific content from 94 abstracts (reproduced in the current volume of J Pharmacol Toxicol Methods). This continued innovation reflects a rubric in SP that identifies problems, seeks solutions and, importantly, validates the solutions.

Fig. 1

An overview of publication trends for safety pharmacology manuscripts published in the annual focused issue of the Journal of Pharmacological & Toxicological Methods. Included are the total number of articles published each year since 2004 and content. The trends for papers were segregated based upon content and whether it involved core battery studies, i.e., the CNS, CV or respiratory systems. Content is also shown for human induced pluripotent cardiac stem cells (hiPSC-CMs), the Comprehensive in vitro Proarrhythmia Assay (CiPA), in silico modeling methods and Supplemental Safety Pharmacology studies (i.e., Renal or GI studies) surveys and animal welfare studies.