IUPHAR Southeast Asian-Western Pacific Region--eighth Meeting. Pharmacology in the Next Millennium. 1-5 November 1999, Taipei, Taiwan.
This conference focused on some areas of particular interest to pharmacologists in the Asia-Pacific region, including prostanoids, drug metabolism and drugs from traditional Chinese herbs. Areas covered in the prostanoid sessions included reviews of the development of selective COX-2 inhibitors, the use of knockout mice to study the role of prostanoid receptors in various disease states, the interactions of G-protein-coupled receptor pathways, and the effects of prostanoid mimetics on autonomic neurons. Sessions on drug metabolism reviewed the use of transgenic mouse models for toxicological screening of new drugs, the use of a combination of probe drugs given together to identify the activity of a range of drug metabolizing enzymes in vivo, and the interaction of drug metabolizing enzymes and nitric oxide. In the presentations on herbal medicines, there were discussions about the regulatory status and the problems involved in conducting clinical trials with these preparations. There were a number of seminars on details of the basic or clinical pharmacology of some active principles derived from herbs, thus recognizing the intense effort by local pharmacologists to improve the scientific study of this important resource.
Tomlinson
B
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Chinese University of Hong Kong, Department of Clinical Pharmacology, Prince of Wales Hospital, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong. btomlinson@cuhk.ed.hk.