Education

• Ph.D., Physiology (Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken, Germany, 1986)
• M.D., Medicine (Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken, Germany, 1981)

Post-Graduate Training

• Post Doctoral Fellow - Pharmacokinetics (College of Pharmacy, University of Florida, 1985)

Academic Appointments/Professional Experience

• 2000-Present. Associate Professor (Joint Appointment), Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Virginia Commonwealth University
• 1999-Present. Vice Chair, Department of Pharmaceutics, Virginia Commonwealth University
• 1997-Present. Co-Director, Clinical Trials Institute, Virginia Commonwealth University
• 1994-Present. Associate Professor with Tenure, Department of Pharmaceutics, Virginia Commonwealth University
• 1989-1994. Assistant Professor and Director Pharmacokinetics / Pharmacodynamics Research Laboratory, Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutics, Virginia Commonwealth University
• 1988-1989. Research Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutics, Virginia Commonwealth University

Professional and Scholarly Interests

• PK and PD studies in the early clinical drug development, dose-response and pharmacological effect-plasma concentration relationships
• Design, implementation and analysis of safety and toleration

Research Interests

• Dr. Venitz directs the Pharmacokinetic-Pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) Research Laboratory with currently five graduate students; his clinical studies are conducted at the Center for Drug Studies (CDS), an in-house Clinical Pharmacology Unit, and the NIH-supported General Clinical Research Center (GCRC). His major research interests include design, implementation and analysis of safety and toleration, PK and PD studies in the early clinical drug development with emphasis on the establishment of dose-response and pharmacological effect-plasma concentration relationships in healthy subjects and patients. Most of his ongoing research involves the development and validation of clinical pharmacological paradigms for CNS model compounds, e.g., ethanol, antidepressants, scopolamine, nicotine, as well as investigational compounds, e.g., NMDA-receptor antagonists, NK1-receptor antagonists, CRH-receptor antagonists and 5-HT1a receptor agonists; preclinical (in-vitro and in-vivo) and early clinical development of novel synthetic allosteric hemoglobin modifiers (SAMs); application of artificial neural networks in QSAR and PK/PD analysis; development of mathematical PK/PD models to predict the in-vitro activity of antimicrobials; development of an ex-vivo model to assess the activity of pulmonary inflammatory mediators; design, implementation and validation of PK/PD simulations for PD tolerance models.

The publications search is performed on the National Library of Medicine's PubMed database. The search may be slow during high traffic hours, may return articles authored by another researcher with a similar name and may not always find all of a researcher's articles.

Publications

Books/Book Chapters

• Venitz J: “Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics,” In: Dowd C, Kier L, editors. Medicinal Chemistry for Nurse Anesthetists, American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (AANA) Publishing, Park Ridge, IL; ISBN 0-9700279-4-X, Chapter 5, 107-142, 2004.
• Slattum PW, Venitz J: “Clinical Pharmacokinetics in the Elderly,” In: Figg WD, McLeod H, editors. Handbook of Anticancer Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics in Cancer Drug Discovery and Development, The Humana Press, Tatowa, NJ; ISBN 1-58829-177-4, Chapter 24, 421-430, 2004.
Recent Publications

• Jain L, Gardner ER, Venitz J, Dahut W, Figg WD: “Development of a Rapid and Sensitive LC-MS/MS Assay for the Determination of Sorafenib in Human Plasma”, J Pharmaceut Biomed Anal, 46(2): 362-367, 2008.
• Dahut WL, Scripture C, Posadas E, Jain L, Gulley JL, Arlen PM, Wright JJ, Yu Y, Cao L, Steinberg SM, Aragon-Ching JB, Venitz J, Jones E, Chen CC and Figg WD: “A Phase II Clinical Trial of Sorafenib in Androgen-Independent Prostate Cancer”, Clin Cancer Res, 14(1): 209-214, 2008.
• Venitz J: “Using Exposure-Response and Biomarkers to Streamline Early Drug Development,” Ernst Schering Research Foundation Workshop, 59: 47-63, 2007.
• Lakhani NJ, Sparreboom A, Xu X, Veenstra T, Venitz J, Dahut WL and Figg WD: “Characterization of In-Vitro and In-Vivo Metabolic Pathways of the Investigational Anticancer Agent, 2-Methoxyestradiol (2ME2)”, J Pharm Sci 96(7): 1821-1831, 2007.