Anders Thorsted vinner Rosenönpriset för avhandling inom farmakometri

Anders Thorsted

Sektionen för farmakokinetik och läkemedelsmetabolism har i år utsett Anders Thorsted till vinnare av Rosenönpriset, eller The Rosenön Award som det kallas på engelska. Priset delas ut till årets bästa doktorsavhandling, framlagd vid svenskt universitet inom områdena läkemedelsmetabolism, farmakokinetik och/eller farmakodynamik. 

Vi frågade Anders Thorsted om forskningen och om att få priset.

Your comment on receiving the award?

—  I was very happy to learn that I received the Rosenön award. I submitted my application a while ago and it was buried somewhere deep in my brain, so receiving the award now came as a big surprise!

I do not particularly enjoy being in the limelight but looking at the list of previous awardees makes me feel honoured. I choose to view it as an acknowledgement of both myself and my supervisors. Them for identifying the need for this research and for drafting the overarching research plan and ideas, and myself for carrying some of those ideas to fruition. 

Can you give us a glimpse of your research?

—  The body’s immune response can act as a double-edged sword, helping to combat the infection but sequentially leading to potential tissue damage and organ dysfunction, which may then change the behaviour that is the pharmacokinetics of administered drugs. Therefore, we investigated and characterised the time-courses of and interplay between host immune response markers following exposure to the bacterial molecule endotoxin (lipopolysaccharide). 

From in vitro data, we studied how the amount of endotoxin released from bacteria is linked to antibiotic concentration – less is released when bacteria is quickly eradicated – and the capacity of neutrophils to deal with various bacterial burdens – a non-linear relation, with a lower ‘critical' neutrophil concentration.

Data from in vivo studies in mini pigs was used to establish models that describe innate cytokine response and dysfunction in cardiovascular and respiratory organ systems, which were then scaled to predict data from endotoxin challenge studies in healthy volunteers. Humans respond more strongly to endotoxin.

—  Secondary, the population pharmacokinetics of piperacillin, a beta-lactam antibiotic, was determined in different patient populations, spanning from febrile children with cancer to critically ill septic patients. This served to optimise piperacillin dosing – continuous infusion superior to bolus regimens – and identify important patient covariates: body weight in children and kidney function in adults, and illustrated the variation in concentration-time profile with varying patient state, that is variation in organ function.

What was the reason you chose this research field?

— Choosing to do research within pharmacology/PKPD was straightforward, as it was the subject that I enjoyed the most, and somewhat excelled at, during my pharmacy studies at Copenhagen University. When I discovered pharmacometrics, that is the combination of PKPD principles and statistical modelling, and that it was possible to do a PhD without experimental/laboratory work, I was hooked.

—  After having spent time at the Pharmacometrics research group at Uppsala University while working on my Master’s thesis, I was fortunate enough to be offered a position as a doctoral student. Expanding my knowledge within the research field and method was probably my primary interest, rather than working within a specific therapeutic area. However, I was excited to explore a relatively new side of antibiotic PKPD-modelling (host immune response to bacteria). Along the way I saw many great examples, from lab bench to bedside, of where modelling and simulation approaches can provide insights and aid in decision making. 

Prissumman på 30 000 kr delas ut med stöd från AstraZeneca, Pharmatheus och Apotekarsocieteten.