In diesem Semester wird die im WiSe 2022/23 erfolgreich gestartete Vortragsreihe Medical Information Sciences fortgesetzt. Renommierte Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler unterschiedlicher Fachdisziplinen und Forschungsstandorte geben jeden Donnerstag ab 16:00 Uhr Einblicke in aktuelle Fragestellungen und Anwendungsgebiete des breiten Forschungsfeldes Medical Information Sciences.

Mechanistic modeling provides a quantitative framework to connect molecular properties, ocular physiology, and clinical outcomes. The eye represents a uniquely accessible system in which key processes - such as diffusion, anatomical barriers, and fluid turnover - can be integrated into ODE-based models to describe drug distribution and elimination. These principles explain central observations such as ocular half-life and its translation across species, by linking molecular size and eye geometry to pharmacokinetics.

A major opportunity arises from combining such models with increasingly rich longitudinal data of drug effect. High-frequency measurements from emerging technologies such as home optical coherence tomography (OCT) capture disease dynamics at an unprecedented temporal resolution. Integrating these data with pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) models enables a more precise characterization of treatment response and has been shown to improve the efficiency of clinical studies by reducing required sample sizes while maintaining statistical power.

Together, these approaches illustrate how mechanistic understanding can be translated into predictive capability - making it possible to infer otherwise inaccessible processes within the eye and to guide therapeutic development. At the same time, important open questions remain, including a deeper understanding of tissue-level distribution and variability in response, offering opportunities for collaborative research at the interface of modeling, data science, and experimental biology.