Former FDA Director to Deliver Keynote at Mercer's Van Greene Lecture

Dr. Lawrence J. Lesko, director of the Center for Pharmacometrics and Systems Pharmacology in the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, is scheduled to deliver the keynote address March 29 for the 2012 G. Van Greene Distinguished Lecture at 's College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

Prior to his post at the University of Florida, Lesko served 16 years as director of the Office of Clinical Pharmacology in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration. As director, he led the advancement of personalized medicine through the update of labels of previously approved drugs with new genetic information.

Lesko's lecture is titled, "P5 Pharmacy: Personalized, Predictive, Preventive, Participatory and Proactive." The 11am lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held in Day Hall on the university's Atlanta campus.

"We are fortunate to have Dr. Lesko as our 2012 Van Greene lecturer," said H.W. "Ted" Matthews, dean of the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and vice president for the health sciences at the University. "As an FDA director, Dr. Lesko has been at the forefront of pharmacy education, practice and scholarship for several years and can share with our students extraordinary insight on the profession: past, present and future. We look forward to learning from his expertise and experience."

At the FDA, Dr. Lesko co-authored numerous Guidance for Industry documents, including "Clinical Pharmacogenomics: Premarketing Evaluation in Early Clinical Trials" and "Pharmacogenomics Data Submissions." He also started a division of pharmacometrics that is responsible for quantitative analysis of dose-response and pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic relationships to support drug labels and new drug application approvals, and the development of drug-disease models to support clinical trial simulations.