This year’s John W. Severinghaus Lecture on Translational Science will be delivered by Evan D. Kharasch, M.D., Ph.D. Dr. Kharasch is Vice Chancellor for Research, Russell D. and Mary B. Sheldon Professor of Anesthesiology, and Director, Division of Clinical and Translational Research, Department of Anesthesiology, and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri.
The lecture will focus on opioids such as methadone that provide long-lasting relief of acute, perioperative, chronic and cancer pain, and which are pivotal to anesthesia practice. With an increase in methadone use, however, there has been a terrifying increase in untoward events. Only recently has there been a better understanding of methadone pharmacology, including pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and pharmacogenetics.
Dr. Kharasch’s lecture tells the story of how these clinical problems were studied in the basic science laboratory, how the insights gained were then verified in clinical trials, and how this...