Dean's Message

Founding Purpose and Objectives of the Bahçeşehir University (BAU) Faculty of Pharmacy

The aging world population, increasing life expectancy, and socio-economic and ecological changes will increase the need for healthcare services in the coming period. In parallel with rising levels of prosperity, average life expectancy around the world is also increasing.[1] The world population, which was 6.5 billion in 2005, has now reached 7.9 billion. While people aged 65 and over currently make up 10% of the world's total population, this proportion is expected to reach 16% by 2050. In Türkiye, the elderly population aged 65 and over was 6.5 million in 2015; this figure increased by 23% to approximately 8 million in 2020. According to population projections, the proportion of the elderly population in Türkiye is expected to be 12.9% in 2030, 16.3% in 2040, 22.6% in 2060 and 25.6% in 2080.[2] The need to develop healthy and active aging policies is therefore growing.

As life expectancy increases, so does the likelihood of facing health problems and chronic diseases in later life. Given these dynamics, as the need for healthcare services grows, innovative drugs will help prevent diseases and reduce treatment costs; innovative drugs and rational therapies will therefore become increasingly important in the pharmaceutical sector. In addition to population growth and longer life expectancy, changing dietary habits and more sedentary lifestyles are expected to increase the length of time people are exposed to chronic diseases. Deaths from chronic diseases are expected to rise by 17% over the next 10 years. According to World Health Organization data, there are more than 500 million people with diabetes worldwide today, 80% of whom live in developing countries. In 2004, 639 million people in developing countries had hypertension, and this number is expected to reach 1 billion by 2025. [3]

Over the next 20 years, the Earth is expected to warm by a further 0.2 ºC and, together with the related greenhouse gas emissions, respiratory diseases such as asthma and bronchitis are expected to increase. Owing to the rise in chronic diseases and their critical impact on human health, the pharmaceutical sector has concentrated its research activities on the development of innovative drugs. According to the definition by the EU High Level Committee on Health, new drugs and treatments include "the development of an entirely new drug to treat a disease for which there is not yet a treatment, or the modification of known pharmaceutical formulations to improve benefits for patients, such as a different administration regimen". Drug research and development (R&D) aimed at discovering new treatments, and the production of these drugs, are regarded as a priority investment area in both developed and developing countries, and the pharmaceutical sector is considered a strategic sector.

The pharmaceutical sector accounts for the largest share of R&D expenditure among sectors in countries around the world. The share of pharmaceutical R&D expenditure is 16% in the European Union, 24% in the USA and 11% in Japan, while it is 1% in Türkiye, and incentives are being provided to increase this rate. Priority has been given to creating the necessary ecosystem in Türkiye in R&D, production, qualified human resources and legislation, particularly in high-tech fields such as biotechnological drugs.

In line with its Vision 2023 goals, the Government of the Republic of Türkiye aims for Türkiye to be among the world's top 10 economies, to reach an export volume of 500 billion dollars and to raise the share of R&D in GDP to 3% by 2023. In addition, the Turkish Industrial Strategy document sets out the ideal of Türkiye becoming "Eurasia's production base for medium- and high-tech products". Through the "Health Transformation Program" implemented since 2004, Türkiye has made great progress in access to healthcare services and treatment, and average life expectancy has risen by 24% over the last 30 years to reach 74 years. One of the factors contributing to the increase in average life expectancy is innovative drugs and increased access to them.

In the 2023 Industry and Technology Strategy document prepared by the Ministry of Industry and Technology of the Republic of Türkiye, "Chemistry" and "Pharmaceuticals" are listed as Türkiye's focus sectors under the heading "Development of Strategic Materials for Priority Sectors".

As of 2020-2021, through its Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Dentistry, Faculty of Health Sciences, Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences and Vocational School of Health Services, Bahçeşehir University continues to train students in the field of health and to conduct R&D in this field, with a view to achieving the goals set by the Ministry of Health within the framework of the "Health Workforce Targets for Health Education" and the "Human Resources in Health 2023 Vision".

In line with the goals set by the Ministry of Industry and Technology and the Ministry of Health, the establishment of the Faculty of Pharmacy was planned in order to increase the number of faculties providing education and conducting research in the field of health at our University. As of 2022, there are a total of 53 Faculties of Pharmacy, 49 in Türkiye and 4 in Cyprus. The occupancy rate of all quotas at state and foundation universities in Türkiye is 100%. In 2020, 118,250 of the students who took the exam listed the Faculty of Pharmacy among their preferences, and only 3.3% of them were placed in a program.

One of Bahçeşehir University's priority areas is the development of innovative drugs

As a result of the drug research and development activities carried out within the Bahçeşehir University Faculty of Medicine, national and international patent applications have been filed for many molecules in a short time and their intellectual property rights have been protected. Significant progress has been made in computational drug design as a result of R&D studies carried out within the scope of TÜBİTAK, TÜSEB, İSTKA and Scientific Research Projects (BAP).

As an important milestone, Phase 2 studies are currently under way at 9 research centers for the drug molecule Montelukast, discovered and repositioned within the scope of COVID-19 studies led by Bahçeşehir University.

In line with our country's 2023 strategic goals of first reducing the current account deficit in the innovative pharmaceutical sector and then turning it into a surplus, we at Bahçeşehir University believe that the Faculty of Pharmacy will make a major contribution to training competent professionals for the sector. Another founding purpose is to train competent pharmacists who will take part in every stage of drug discovery from scratch, a process with a total cost of up to 1.5 billion dollars.

Of the 34 centers granted R&D center certification by the Ministry of Industry and Technology, 13 are located in Istanbul. The BAU Faculty of Pharmacy will work in close collaboration with the 13 R&D centers at our University and will make intensive efforts to close the gap in competent professionals who can carry out "original drug discovery and development activities" in the sector.

Led by the Bahçeşehir University Faculty of Medicine and supported by the Istanbul Development Agency (İSTKA) in 2021, the "Computational Drug Design Center - HİTMER" will be one of the greatest strengths of the Faculty of Pharmacy as well as the Faculty of Medicine. This center will pave the way for drug discovery studies developed together with various pharmaceutical companies.

As life expectancy increases worldwide, interest is growing in academia and industry in innovative and rational drug research and development aimed at new treatment mechanisms and the discovery of new treatments for the health problems and disease risks faced in later life. High-throughput screening methods developed by the pharmaceutical industry in the 1990s have proven to be quite expensive and only moderately successful in finding new drug leads. Industry and academia therefore feel a need for innovation, and new, more rational approaches to drug development are needed that can also benefit from advances in molecular biology, molecular modeling, and computational chemistry and biology. In recent years, the growing number of solved crystal structures and access to them through the Protein Data Bank have allowed these data to be used as successful template targets in molecular modeling studies. Computational chemistry, in turn, offers various simulation and virtual screening tools and algorithms used to characterize protein-ligand binding, statistical methods and models for analyzing binding data to help predict suitable ligands, and molecular modeling tools that facilitate the design of new ligands.

In recent years in particular, developments in computer technologies, together with advances in parallel computing methods and rapid progress in high-performance computing and simulation techniques, have made it possible to simulate many physiological environments with high accuracy. [4]

Accurate characterization of protein-ligand interactions is important for studies in molecular biology and pharmacology. To this end, the structures of ligand-bound receptor complexes have been determined by X-ray crystallography and NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance), binding energies from rate constants, and amino acids important for binding through mutagenesis studies. Although these experiments help characterize protein-ligand complexes adequately, they generally require great effort and are difficult to perform routinely. Various studies have shown that similar information on protein-ligand complexes can be obtained more easily using molecular modeling techniques such as molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulations. Characterizing ligand-protein interactions is critical in drug design and in the subsequent investigation of new treatment models. Computer-aided simulation techniques are used successfully not only in discovering new drugs but also in examining the side effects and mechanisms of action of existing drugs or investigational drug candidates.

Industrial statistics show that between 5,000 and 10,000 compounds are synthesized and tested for each original drug approved for medical use. Preclinical studies last approximately 3-6 years. Of the compounds tested, only 100-250 progress to the clinical trial phase. These phases take a total of 7-8 years and cost approximately 1 billion dollars. The drug repositioning or repurposing approach significantly reduces the cost and time of developing a new drug from scratch. Because the toxic effects and the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of licensed drugs used in the clinic have been thoroughly studied in preclinical and clinical drug development processes, and information on these drugs is available, these molecule libraries become suitable candidates for study in new indications. Since the molecules considered in drug repositioning studies have already gone through preclinical and clinical phase studies for a different disease and have well-defined profiles, they do not require long-term preclinical studies and are therefore excellent candidates in urgent disease situations or epidemics.

Using machine learning approaches to identify these candidates makes it easier to select the molecule more quickly and accurately. Today, when only one out of millions of molecules tested over many years can become a drug, computer-aided drug design studies and artificial intelligence-based drug development and identification studies have gained momentum in recent years to save both time and the cost of tests amounting to millions of dollars, and this will be one of the priority research areas of the Faculty of Pharmacy. To this end, strong collaborations will be established with the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences – Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics and Artificial Intelligence Engineering, and the relevant departments of the Faculty of Medicine (for example, the Computational Biology and Molecular Simulations Lab) at Bahçeşehir University, and effective national and international projects will be developed.

It has been reported that every 1 unit spent on the education of pharmacists saves society 6 units. With our Faculty of Pharmacy, we will help create this added value.

The number of clinical pharmacists in our country is very limited, and there is a need to train clinical pharmacists. One of the main goals of the BAU Faculty of Pharmacy will be to train research-oriented clinical pharmacists.

The proportion of research pharmacists working in the pharmaceutical industry is only around 1%, and this proportion needs to be increased rapidly in line with the strategic goals set by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Industry and Technology. In line with the strategic goals of our University and the relevant ministries, one of our priority objectives will be to train competent pharmacists equipped with R&D skills and ready to work in the pharmaceutical industry.

According to 2016 statistics, there were approximately 291,000 pharmacists in the USA and 28,485 in Türkiye. Approximately 60% of pharmacists in the USA work in community pharmacies, compared with 90% in Türkiye; approximately 30% in the USA work in institutional settings such as hospitals, compared with 8% in Türkiye; and approximately 10% in the USA work in academia, compared with 1% in Türkiye. It is therefore necessary to increase the number of pharmacists who will work in pharmaceutical R&D centers in industry and in academia in our country. Planning at the BAU Faculty of Pharmacy will be carried out accordingly. In particular, to increase rational drug design studies, working in coordination with the İSTKA-supported Computational Drug Design Center planned to be established in 2022 within our University's Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty will focus on artificial intelligence-based drug development training, and through compulsory and elective courses students will be enabled to master at least one programming language (Python, C, etc.) alongside their professional courses. This will broaden students' vision and enhance their competencies in this developing field.

Through collaborations and joint projects with the Artificial Intelligence Engineering, Software Engineering, and Computational Biology and Molecular Simulations Laboratories at our University, drug development studies will be rationalized. This will also help increase our country's competitiveness in this field relative to other countries.

Sources
AIFD Vision 2023 Report, August 2012.
Turkish Statistical Institute, 18.03.2021, No: 37227. https://data.tuik.gov.tr/Bulten/Index?p=37227&dil=2
World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes
Durdağı et al. MolecularTherapy, 2021.

Prof. Dr. Serdar Durdağı
Founding Dean, Faculty of Pharmacy, Bahçeşehir University