Estimation of Population Pharmacokinetic Parameters Using a Genetic Algorithm

Population pharmacokinetics (PopPK) models are used to characterize the behavior of a drug in a particular population. Construction of PopPK models requires the estimation of optimal PopPK parameters, which is a challenging task due to the characteristics of the PopPK database. Several estimation algorithms have been proposed for estimating PopPK parameters; however, the majority of these methods are based on maximum likelihood estimation methods that optimize the probability of observing data, given a model that requires the systematic computation of the first and second derivate of a multivariate likelihood function. This work presents a genetic algorithm for obtaining optimal PopPK parameters by directly optimizing the multivariate likelihood function avoiding the computation of the first and second derivate of the likelihood function.