In Memoriam: Dr. Alan Forrest

Forrest was a University at Buffalo faculty member and a research professor in the department of pharmacy practice and biostatistics from 1989 to 2015. He was renowned in the field of antimicrobial pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and toxicodynamics (PK/PD/TD) as a researcher and educator for almost 40 years.

Forrest received his PharmD from the University of Southern California in 1979 and held a number of prestigious faculty positions at USC, the University of Maryland and then at UB. He served most recently as a Clinical Professor and Director of the Center for Pharmacometrics at the University of North Carolina, Eshelman School of Pharmacy. He also worked as the Senior Director of Pharmacometrics at the Institute for Clinical Pharmacodynamics and was an expert adviser to the Food and Drug Administration and the pharmaceutical industry.

His research primarily focused on aspects of translational medicine within the fields of anti-infectives and oncology, using pharmacometrics as a means of integrating pre-clinical and clinical data, including both healthy volunteer and patient data. His landmark paper studying ciprofloxacin pharmacodynamics in seriously ill patients was paradigm-shifting. As a result of his work, exposure response analyses for antimicrobials have become standard practice in translational drug development.

Forrest mentored over 100 trainees and fellows, and in 2016 he received the 2016 Lewis B. Sheiner Lecture Award from the International Society of Pharmacometrics. Throughout his esteemed career, Forrest always maintained his focus in translating his research into clinical practice to improve the care of patients.