In July 2020, Tonglei Li, Ph.D., began his tenure as Pharmaceutical Research editor-in-chief. Li is currently a professor and the Allen Chao Chair in the Purdue University Department of Industrial and Physical Pharmacy (IPPH), College of Pharmacy. Li has been an AAPS member since 1998. He won the AAPS New Investigator Grant in Pharmaceutics and the Pharmaceutical Technologies in 2002 and became an AAPS Fellow in 2013. He serves on the Food and Drug Administration’s Pharmaceutical Science and Clinical Pharmacology Advisory Committee. In his introductory editorial, Big Shoes to Fill at A Challenging Time, which can be read in Pharmaceutical Research for free, Li pens his enthusiasm about his new role as editor-in-chief.
“I share the vision [of previous editors-in-chief] and will work with my fellow editors to ensure this forum stays as a forerunner in serving the AAPS and the drug development community in general,” shared Li. “As the business of pharmaceutical industry is mainly driven by innovation, traditional boundaries between drug development and discovery and clinical assessment become even more blurred, thanks to the advance and integration of individual disciplines, as well as exponential buildup in knowledge. The need for interdisciplinary research is more imperative, as drug products become more complex, multi-component, and even involve live cells or tissues. I hope Pharmaceutical Research will help promote research along this direction.”
Learn more about Li’s research and his vision for Pharmaceutical Research from his recent conversation with Springer Nature and AAPS staff.
Springer Nature and AAPS: You obtained your Ph.D. at Purdue and went to University of Kentucky (UK) to start your academic carrier before returning to your alma mater. How did that experience shape your research?
Li: IPPH was best known for its prominence in solid-state formulation and manufacturing, which really ushered me into solid-state organic chemistry. Because of my chemistry background and an immense interest in computing and simulation, I was fascinated by crystal structure and molecular packing. So at the beginning of my tenure at UK, I was looking for theoretical tools and ended up plunging into conceptual density functional theory. Its framework is mesmerizing and elegant. More importantly, its mathematics and computational process were simple enough for me to keep up. The efforts led to development of several interesting concepts to study intermolecular interactions and crystal structures, which was also aided by our bench studies of crystal engineering and solution chemistry.
My research interest also branched into drug delivery. As you know, nano was hot at that time, and as an assistant professor, I could not resist applying to enormous funding opportunities in nanotechnology. So my group started developing drug nanocrystals and tested in animals. One of the cool ideas we tried was drug nanocrystals in which fluorophores were physically entrapped as guests. These so-called hybrid nanocrystals enabled a simple way to achieve bio-imaging of the tiny crystals that were also pharmacologically active. I was lucky to find funding and support both chemistry and drug delivery activities.
What are you currently researching at Purdue?
Both interests in solid-state chemistry and drug delivery research have eventually merged into one ostensibly simple question on which our current endeavors are based: How does a drug product perform in humans, and can modeling and simulation be used to predict the in vivo exposure of the product? Thus, over the last a few years, my group and I have focused on developing multiscale modeling and simulation approaches to compute and predict the in vivo fate of drug delivery systems and products. One active project is to study protein stability under hydrodynamic stress by coupling finite-element and discrete-element methods with molecular dynamics. A related effort is to couple computational fluid dynamics with physiologically based pharmacokinetics for predicting the systemic exposure of a subcutaneously injected protein formulation.
What prompted you to take this editor-in-chief position?
Through all these experiences, I began to appreciate each and every aspect of pharmaceutical sciences. Drug development is constantly evolving, and a research area may have a life cycle of 10-15 years from sprouting to being hot and to its maturity. One must constantly learn and reinvent him/herself. Taking this editor-in-chief position will allow me to continue learning new things and, perhaps more importantly, let me better serve the AAPS community.
What is your first goal as editor-in-chief?
My top priority for the journal is to increase submissions and have more quality papers published every month. There is some perception that Pharmaceutical Research is a “bio” or pharmacology journal. That is not true. We cover every aspect of drug development including, but not limited to, the late stage of drug discovery, ADME and pharmacology, drug delivery, formulation and manufacturing, and product evaluation and regulation. As long as the article is hypothesis-driven and/or mechanism-based, the research is suitable for submission to our journal. I encourage everyone working in drug development to consider Pharmaceutical Research when you submit your next research paper. Working together with my fellow editors, I will ensure that your paper is treated professionally and turned around fast.
AAPS members have full access to Pharmaceutical Research articles by logging into the AAPS website and following the instructions.