Individualizing Immune Modulation & Chemotherapy

The overall aim for this research is to establish and document principles for individualized dosing. This may achieved by regular measurements of drugs in plasma or blood, intracellular drug concentrations or surrogate markers of drug effects, the identification of variant genotypes or altered gene expression affecting drug response, etc. Among the drugs and targets being explored in current projects are mycophenolate and its target inosine monophosphate dehydrogenase (IMPDH), glucocorticoids, tacrolimus, thiopurines and busulfan. These investigations span from clinical studies in organ and stem cell transplant recipients to assay development and experiments in subpopulations of cells isolated from patients during drug therapy as well as in cultured cells. As described elsewhere on this IMUP web site, this research is performed in collaboration with the clinical transplant units at Rikshospitalet University Hospital plus colleagues at the School of Pharmacy, University of Oslo and the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, US.