New honorary doctors at the Faculty of Pharmacy

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The Faculty of Pharmacy at Uppsala University has appointed Professor Christopher J. H. Porter at Monash University, Professor Fang-Rong Chang at the Kaohsiung Medical University and France Mentré, Professor of Biostatistics at INSERM, Paris Diderot University, as new honorary doctors.
Christopher J. H. Porter works at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, where he is Professor of Galenic Pharmacy. He is a world-leading researcher in the borderlands between pharmaceutical physical chemistry, galenic pharmacy, biology and materials science. His research has resulted in deepened knowledge about how drug absorption and disposition can be optimised by tailoring medical substances or excipients to match naturally occurring transport routes for lipids. Christopher J. H. Porter has been a strong influence on the research at Uppsala University’s Faculty of Pharmacy and has established a well-functioning cooperation with the faculty in pharmaceutical formulation.
Fang-Rong Chang is Professor of Pharmacognosy at Kaohsiung Medical University in Taiwan. His main field of research is in biologically active substances from natural products (including traditional Chinese medicines) with anti-viral and cytotoxic effects. Within this framework, he has developed transgenic variants of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana for use in screening, studied the influence of chemical substances in foods in connection with diseases, and contributed to several patents. Since 2004, Fang-Rong Chang has in a number of ways been involved in collaborative research projects and teaching at all levels with staff at the Division of Pharmacognosy, the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Uppsala University. For example, together with Professor Anders Backlund he has been a driving force behind the ‘Dual Degree programme’ in doctoral education, which was launched in 2012 by the Disciplinary Domain of Medicine and Pharmacy and Kaohsiung Medical University.
France Mentré, Professor of Biostatistics at INSERM, the Paris Diderot University in France, develops methods for optimising model-based design and analysis of clinical pharmaceutical studies. The basis for doing so rests on mathematical models which describe the course of events in underlying physiological, pathophysiological and pharmacological processes. Such models can allow integrating different kinds of patient data: from the level of medical substances in the blood and how these affect the patient’s physiology, markers of the disease progression to symptoms and survival. The purpose of these calculations is to determine the connection between therapy and response and to deduce to what extent patients react differently to the treatment. If the differences between patients is large, the models can also form a basis for how best to individualise treatments.
The Conferment Ceremony will be held in the University Main Building on 26 January 2018.
Linda Koffmar