Pediatric Pharmacology and Pharmacometrics Research Center

The Paediatric Pharmacology and Pharmacometrics Research Center (PedPharm) is inventing, translating, and implementing intelligent digital health solutions and child-friendly formulations to improve and save the lives of paediatric patients (see below Figure). Our research group designs, conducts and analyzes clinical pharmacology studies to optimize and personalize treatments in paediatric patients.

Prof. Marc Pfister, MD and Prof. Johannes van den Anker, MD lead the Department of Pediatric Pharmacology. The creation of this department was facilitated by a generous donation of the Eckenstein-Geigy Foundation, starting 2014.

Recent activities:

UKBB level – The Paediatric Clinical Pharmacy group was formed (Dr. Verena Gotta) to provide paediatric pharmacology consultations in collaboration with PedPharm. As a result of a strong partnership with paediatric endocrinology (Prof. Gabor Szinnai) the digital health project OptiThyDose was granted ~1.0M by BRCCH.

University of Basel level – While mentoring three master students and six PhD students we have published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers in 2 years. We have strengthened our partnerships with Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences (Prof. Joerg Huwyler) and Swiss TPH (Prof. Jennifer Keiser). The latest joint project with Swiss TPH was granted ~0.8M by the Bill & Melina Gates Foundation.

National level – We lead SwissPedPha, serve in the SwissPedNet board and contribute to expert teams of SwissPedDose. We partner with several Swiss research centers such as the SwissPedNet hub Lucerne (Dr. Michael Buettcher).

International level – A joint project with the University of Oxford/MORU Tropical Health Network was launched to evaluate the patient-friendly CHILD-IVITAB formulation in children with parasitic infection, supported by Trasher Fund of 0.5M. We partner with other acedemic institutions such as the University of Konstanz to develop software tools such as OptiThyDose to personlize dosing in clinical practice applying and integrating pharmacometric, AI/ ML methods and control theory approches.