Our mission is to perform clinical studies in healthy volunteers and patients to elucidate the impact of genetic variants and various pathophysiological states on pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics.
Our main focus is the study of the drug distribution process by employing techniques to measure target site distribution directly, i.e. PET or microdialysis.
Microdialysis
Microdialysis is a minimal invasive tool for measuring pharmacokinetics continuously in the extracellular space of human and animal tissues. By inserting a small microdialysis catheter and sampling of analyses exogenous (drugs) and endogenous compounds (e.g. lactate, pyruvate, glucose, cytokines) can be determined in virtually all tissues including brain, muscle tissue, skin and adipose tissue. Microdialysis has thereby become an indispensable technique in commercial drug development and academic research.
Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
PET is a non-invasive imaging method which allows for following the distribution and kinetics of radioactively labelled molecules in the living organism. PET can be used to answer different questions related to drug pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. Our current research focus is to use PET to study the functional activity of membrane transporters involved in drug transport (ABC and SLC transporters) in different organs (e.g. brain, liver) in a translational manner spanning all the way from rodent disease models to studies in human patients (epilepsy, Alzheimer). Clinical and preclinical PET studies are performed in cooperation with the Department of Biomedical Imaging und Image-guided Therapy, Division of Nuclear Medicine (Medical University of Vienna) and AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH.
Pharmacokinetic/Pharmacodynamic (PK/PD)
In order to support clinical breakpoints and to optimize therapy with a specific antimicrobial agent the pharmacokinetic profile (which at our department can be determined by techniques like e.g. intensive pharmacokinetic blood sampling, isolation of leucocytes, microdialysis and bronchoalveolar lavage) and its pharmacodynamic activity have to be set into context. To achieve this goal we use standard techniques like the minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) and time kill curves (TCC) but employ also dynamic TCK. A specific focus is the evaluation of the impact of protein binding on antimicrobial activity and the estimation of bacterial killing simulating physiologic conditions, e.g. by performing pharmacodynamic experiments in the presence of surfactant or at different pH values.
Pharmacogenomics
...
For information please contact our Section Head:
Markus Zeitlinger, MD
E-Mail: markus.zeitlinger@meduniwien.ac.at