Reviews and Perspectives in Clinical Pharmacology: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

It is with great pleasure that I share with you that two of the three special issues celebrating the 65th anniversary of the Journal of Clinical Pharmacology (JCP) have been successfully published this year. The first special issue was dedicated to the papers that have received the McKeen Cattell Award over the years. Our second special issue highlighted the top-cited papers published in JCP during the past 15 years.

I would like to use this editorial to introduce the third and final special issue commemorating JCP's 65th anniversary. This issue will be published in the days preceding the 2026 annual meeting of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology (ACCP). This year's meeting will take place from September 27 to 29, with pre-meeting workshops and the American Board of Clinical Pharmacology (ABCP) Curriculum Review Course on September 26. The meeting will be held at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center in North Bethesda, Maryland.

This final special issue celebrating JCP's 65th anniversary features reviews and original research articles authored by ACCP members and non-members from across the globe. Contributors represent the United States; Canada; Europe including France, Italy, and the Netherlands; Asia, including China and Singapore; and Oceania, represented by New Zealand. This broad geographic representation underscores the global interest in publishing in JCP, the flagship journal of ACCP and reflects the Journal's global impact as a primary source for advances in clinical pharmacology.

The authors contributing to this special issue include clinicians, academicians, scientists from the pharmaceutical industry, and regulatory scientists from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The breadth of topics represented is equally impressive, reflecting the remarkable scope and evolution of contemporary clinical pharmacology and pharmacometrics.

Topics including the history of JCP; the evolution of clinical pharmacology in China; mitochondrial medicine; street pharmacology; use of ketamine across clinical indications; the use of concentration-QTc modeling; factor XI inhibition for secondary prevention of ischemic stroke; genome sequencing; approaches to accelerating pediatric oncology drug development; simulation-based evaluation of busulfan sampling strategies in adults and adolescents; oligonucleotide therapeutics; clinical pharmacology of eplontersen; strategies for rare disease drug development; the role of clinical pharmacology in shaping rare disease drug development; the pharmacokinetics of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies in Japanese and non-Japanese individuals; long-acting injectable therapies for HIV treatment and prevention; semi-mechanistic HbA1c models in type 2 diabetes; endogenous biomarkers to evaluate transporter-mediated drug–drug interactions; physiologically based pharmacokinetics models for fetal drug exposure; model-informed dose selection of intranasal epinephrine in young children; quantitative systems pharmacology; volumetric microsampling for patient-centric therapeutic drug monitoring; FDA approvals of gene therapies; and neuroscience drug development and regulatory decision making.

Taken together, the articles in this special issue underscore the past, present, and future of our discipline of clinical pharmacology and pharmacometrics. They also emphasize the critical importance of global collaboration and, equally important, collaboration across disciplines and sectors. Continued progress in our discipline will depend on strong partnerships among regulatory scientists, pharmaceutical industry drug developers, academicians, clinicians, clinical pharmacologists—including PharmDs, PhDs, and MDs—and pharmacometricians.

The future of clinical pharmacology is bright, particularly as we join forces, recognize, and respect one another's skills, expertise, experience, and knowledge, and support the next generation of clinical pharmacologists. We must provide them with a strong foundation on which to build while also giving them the freedom and opportunities to re-create, adapt, and advance our discipline in response to the rapidly evolving landscape of biomedical science, drug development, technology, and regulatory science.

I sincerely hope you will enjoy this third special issue and find its articles informative, thought-provoking, and inspiring. I wish you a deeply fulfilling reading experience!