Wendy Warr interviews Han van de Waterbeemd
Han van de Waterbeemd studied physical organic chemistry at the
Technical University of Eindhoven, The Netherlands, and did a Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry at the University of Leiden, The Netherlands. After a postdoc with
Bernard Testa at the School of Pharmacy of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, he held a 5-year faculty position at the same institution. He has also taught medicinal chemistry to pharmacy students at the universities of Berne and Basel in Switzerland from 1987-1997. In 1988 he joined F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd in Basel as head of the Molecular Properties Group. He moved in 1997 to Pfizer Central Research UK, later Pfizer Global Research and Development and held various positions in the Department of Drug Metabolism, later called PDM (Pharmacokinetics, Dynamics and Metabolism), including head of discovery, and head of automation and in silico ADME technologies. In 2005 he moved to AstraZeneca to become global project leader of C-Lab, their molecular properties and in silico ADMET modeling platform.
He has published more than 135 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters, and (co-) edited 11 books. His research interests include physicochemical and structural molecular properties and their role in drug disposition, as well as the in silico modeling of ADMET properties. Han was secretary of the QSAR and Modeling Society 1995-2005. His hobbies include various sports such as running, mountain biking, hiking, skiing, badminton and tennis. Further interests include Mediterranean gardening and wine tasting.
Recent Books -
1. ADME/Tox Approaches; Testa, B.; van de Waterbeemd, H., Eds. In Comprehensive Medicinal Chemistry, 2nd ed.; Taylor, J. B., Triggle. D. J., Eds.; Elsevier: Oxford, England 2007; Volume 5.
2. Pharmacokinetics and Metabolism in Drug Design, 2nd ed.; Smith, D.A.; van de Waterbeemd, H.; Walker, D. K., Eds.; Wiley-VCH: Weinheim, Germany, 2006.
3. van de Waterbeemd, H.; Rose, S. Quantitative approaches to structure-activity relationships. In Part IV. Substituents and Functions: Qualitative and Quantitative Aspects of Structure-Activity Relationships, The Practice of Medicinal Chemistry, 2nd ed.; Wermuth, C., Ed.; Academic Press: Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2003; pp 351-369. (Third edition is currently in preparation.)
4. Drug Bioavailability: Estimation of Solubility, Permeability, Absorption and Bioavailability; van de Waterbeemd, H.; Hans Lennernäs, H.; Per Artursson, P. Eds.; Wiley-VCH: Weinheim, Germany, 2003. (Second edition is currently being prepared by Han van de Waterbeemd and Bernard Testa.)
Download PDF Version of this Interview.
Dr. Warr: I couldn’t find a biography for you on the Web. Do you have a personal home page?
Dr. Han van de Waterbeemd: I don’t have one since I’ve worked in the pharmaceutical industry since 1988 and didn’t want to compromise myself too much. Being active in the field gives enough exposure. A Google search on "Van de Waterbeemd" gives 51,400 hits, while Yahoo produces 10,700.
WW: What led you into the QSAR and ADMET fields?
HvdW: I started with QSAR during my PhD thesis (1977-1980) at the University of Leiden. We tried to see whether rate constants of partitioning could be more useful than partition or distribution coefficients. Many of us realized much later the relevance of this work in relation to membrane transport. Compare, for example, log P octanol/water with log Papp in Caco-2 or PAMPA measurements, or equilibrium constant versus rate constant.
I grew in the ADMET field during my career path at Pfizer (1997-2005) where I worked in the DMPK department. Initially I was a DMPK drug discovery manager, but gradually went to a role in automation of in vitro measurements and in silico prediction of ADME properties.
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