Simulations Plus, Inc. (NASDAQ: SLP), a leading provider of simulation and modeling software and consulting services for pharmaceutical discovery and development, announced today the release of Version 8.0 of its flagship GastroPlus ™ simulation software with significantly expanded functionality and user convenience.
GastroPlus 8.0 now includes:
- Simulation of both inhibition and induction of transporters and enzymes in any tissue using the physiologically based pharmacokinetics (PBPK) model, and simulations of drug-drug interactions based on any combination of such actions
- Ability to specify dissolution rates as function of pH, including fitting “Z Factor” from multiple in vitro dissolution experiments at different pH
- Enhanced modeling of drug absorption and distribution for ocular and pulmonary delivery
- Addition of a paracellular permeability model that specifically accounts for movement of drug between the epithelial cells lining the intestinal wall, in addition to transport into and through the cells
- Enhanced PDPlus™ module for building pharmacodynamics (drug effect) models and predicting pharmacodynamic effects for new doses and dosage forms
- An expanded library of animal physiologies
- Expanded outputs for the Population Simulator
- Increased execution speed
- Numerous user convenience features and “sanity checks” to prevent users from running simulations with inputs that appear to be inconsistent
Dr. Viera Lukacova, team leader for Simulation Technologies at Simulations Plus, said, “Version 8.0 represents a major upgrade of our industry-leading GastroPlus software for the simulation of drug absorption, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics. It incorporates changes involving several person-years of effort since our last major release of Version 7.0 in August 2010. These changes are a combination of features requested by industry scientists and of our own design that extend the power of GastroPlus in important ways for analysis of both preclinical and clinical data.”
Walt Woltosz , chairman and chief executive officer of Simulations Plus, added, “GastroPlus is by far the dominant software in its class, in use by all of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies as well as many medium-size and smaller companies around the world. With the new capabilities in Version 8.0, we believe we have extended our scientific and technological leadership in this important area of pharmaceutical science. The feedback we’ve received in our Advanced GastroPlus Training Workshops, as well as in reviewing the ever-increasing number of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles written by our users tells us that GastroPlus provides significant value to our users in making sound project decisions in drug development.”