Henthorn Program
Primary Appointment: Professor, Anesthesiology
Secondary Appointment: Adjoint Professor, Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Education
- BA in Biology, Drake University, Des Moines, IA
- MD, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, IL
- Residency Anesthesiology, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, IL
- Post-doctorate Clinical Pharmacology, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, IL
- Post-doctorate Clinical Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet, Huddinge, Sweden
- Sabbatical Pharmacometrics, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
Contact Information
Mailstop B117
12705 East Montview, Suite 200
Aurora, CO 80045
Telephone: (303) 724-9954
Email: thomas.henthorn@cuanschutz.edu
Research Interests
As a trained Clinical Pharmacologist I have special interests in the pharmacokinetics of drug distribution, metabolism, pharmacogenetics, drug transporters and pharmacodynamics. As Clinical Pharmacology is a translational science field, I have conducted cellular, animal, human subject and clinical drug trials. Most of my work has resulted in the development of complex pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) models with a wide variety of experimental and clinical datasets using the SAAM II software (University of Washington, Seattle) and population PK/PD and pharmacometrics, specifically using NONMEM 7.3 (ICON, Dublin, Ireland) and Phoenix 8.0 (Certara, Princeton, NJ). These kinetic/statistical platforms are used extensively to perform population PK/PD data analyses and are installed in our laboratory with parallel processing, linked to Amazon Web Services, to analyze large models and datasets.
Research Description
We are currently engaged in cannabinoid pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. We are combining dense sampling datasets from Marilyn Huestis' lab at NIDA, obtained during carefully controlled clinical trials, in which marijuana was administered by smoking or oral consumption and concentrations of various cannabinoids and their metabolites were measured in plasma and urine. In addition we are combining these data with similar much sparser (per subject) observational data in subjects and patients in Colorado with the near term goal of estimating total cannabinoid exposure (i.e., daily dose) in these individuals. Later term goals are to describe the dose-response relationship for the adverse and possible therapeutic effects of cannabinoids. We are also collaborating with investigators who are conducting driving simulation and neurocognition tests to correlate with cannabis consumption and to extend these observations to formal pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic modeling.
In a related vein we are involved in pain research that aims to describe the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of various opioid (specifically; fentanyl, methadone, norbuprenorphine, hydrocodone, and morphine) and nonopioid analgesics (specifically; ketamine, ketorolac, THC). To assist with this work we are currently developing instrumentation with the School of Bioengineering to quantify responses to various modalities of pain.