Dr. Marcus Vance, MD, PhD

Biography

Marcus Vance trained first as a physician—medical degree from the University of Virginia School of Medicine, followed by a residency in Internal Medicine and subspecialty fellowship in Clinical Pharmacology at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The fellowship years redirected his trajectory. He recognized that clinical medicine's relationship with pharmacokinetics was often anecdotal and intuitive when it needed to be quantitative and evidence-grounded. That tension has driven his research program ever since.

The PhD came later, through a concurrent research pathway—a dissertation in pharmacogenomics completed at the National Institutes of Health through a joint Johns Hopkins/NIH program, focusing on P-glycoprotein efflux dynamics at the blood-brain barrier. The project had practical roots: understanding why certain patients experienced CNS adverse events from drugs assumed to be BBB-impermeant, while others on identical regimens did not. The answer, largely, was ABCB1.

He joined ICPS as Lead Clinical Pharmacologist in 2014, following a decade-long appointment as Associate Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. His move to the institute reflected a deliberate shift toward translational education—producing resources that bridge the gap between primary pharmacological literature and the clinicians and informed patients who need to act on it.

Research Focus

Dr. Vance's primary research interests cluster around antiparasitic pharmacokinetics, generic drug bioequivalence methodology, and pharmacogenomic determinants of drug toxicity. Ivermectin became a central focus of his work at ICPS not by plan, but by necessity: the molecule's extraordinary clinical and public health relevance, combined with the remarkable volume of misinformation surrounding it post-2020, created a clear mandate for rigorous, accessible pharmacological scholarship.

His bioequivalence work has focused on methodological weaknesses in standard ANDA bioequivalence studies: the limitations of single-dose crossover designs in highly variable drugs, the underappreciation of food-effect variability, and the challenge of extrapolating healthy-volunteer PK data to disease-state populations. Several of his publications have been cited in FDA guidance documents and ANDA approval correspondence.

The pharmacogenomics thread—particularly the clinical implications of ABCB1 variant prevalence across ethnic populations—remains active. It connects directly to the ICPS mission of patient safety: understanding which patients face elevated risk from otherwise well-tolerated drugs is not merely academic. It is actionable clinical information.

Selected Academic Appointments & Affiliations

• Lead Clinical Pharmacologist — Institute for Clinical Pharmacology & Safety (2014–present)
• Associate Professor of Pharmacology (Adjunct) — University of Maryland School of Pharmacy (2004–2016)
• Clinical Associate — Johns Hopkins Department of Medicine, Division of Clinical Pharmacology (2008–2014)
• Research Fellow — National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), NIH Pharmacogenomics Program (2002–2004)
• Member — American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (ASCPT)
• Fellow — American College of Clinical Pharmacology (ABCP)
• Reviewer — British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology; Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics; Drug Metabolism and Disposition

Education

• MD — University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, VA (1998)
• PhD (Pharmacogenomics) — Johns Hopkins University / NIH Graduate Partnership Program (2004)
• Residency, Internal Medicine — Johns Hopkins Hospital (1998–2001)
• Fellowship, Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology — Johns Hopkins Hospital (2001–2003)