Tropical Pharmacology and Therapeutics

Nearly one million people die each year from poverty-related and ‘neglected’ tropical parasitic and fungal infections such as malaria, leishmaniasis and mycetoma. This is mainly due to a lack of safe and effective drugs. Vulnerable patient groups such as children and pregnant women are worst affected, but these groups are often excluded from clinical trials in the development of drugs. This means that there is a lack of good treatment options for those patients who actually need them the most.

Our research aims to find optimal treatment regimens for these poverty-related diseases. For this, we use pharmacometric mathematical models that describe all the processes a drug goes through once it is inside the body, and the desirable and undesirable effects that the drug has on both the patient and the disease-causing microorganism. Our research provides answers to important clinical questions such as: What dose should be used to treat young children or pregnant women? What biomarkers in the blood should we measure to confirm that a patient is cured? How can parasites in the skin of patients be treated most effectively? The new tools and biomarkers we are developing also make drug development for these neglected diseases more efficient and successful, so that new drugs and drug combinations can be made available to patients faster.