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CLINICAL PHARMACOLOGY AND PHARMACOEPIDEMIOLOGY
Dear visitors!
Welcome to the homepage of the Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacoepidemiology in Heidelberg!
In clinical pharmacology, we are driven by three major challenges that ultimately determine the greatest possible benefit of drugs:
On the one hand, we are concerned with developing new therapies: Despite decades of research, many patients with particular diseases remain without effective therapy. New drugs and therapeutic options are therefore being sought worldwide to close these gaps. Novel therapies are tested in patients in clinical trials before a medication is authorized and gets available on the market. Since they require particular expertise and experience to ensure that no one is harmed, these Early Clinical Trials are carried out under specific regulatory and legal conditions and high ethical standards. The aim of clinical trials in drug development is to evaluate the efficacy and safety of new treatment options - and thus their benefits for patients.
On the other hand, clinical pharmacology is dedicated to improve the benefit and minimize the risk of drug therapy in clinical practice and to adapt therapy to the specific needs of the patients. In many disease conditions, drug therapy leads to different effects in different patients and is not tolerated by everybody the same way. One reason for this variability in drug effects can be found in our genes. The research field of pharmacogenetics is concerned with these inherited differences in drug effects. Pharmacogenomics is the genome-wide investigation of possible new genetic variants that influence the effect of drugs.
The third challenge of clinical pharmacology is the improvement of medication safety. Adverse drug effects in a patient can be due to both, vulnerability to side effects or medication errors. Medication safety is dedicated to the prevention of adverse drug reactions. It includes both, avoiding medication errors and targeting drug therapy to the specific needs and safety profile of the patient. The assessment of drug-drug interactions as well as drug-gene interactions (in the case of pharmacogenetic diagnostic in patients) leads to precision dosing or to the adjustment of drug prescriptions.
In order to meet these three key challenges, we have gathered core pharmacological expertise in eight multidisciplinary sections of the department and dedicate ourselves to the following tasks:
- We conduct early clinical trials of new therapies in an ISO 9001-certified environment.
- We initiate medication safety initiatives for long-term quality assurance in the entire process of prescribing medicines.
- We investigate drug-gene interactions and pharmacogenomic risk profiles in patients and are committed to precision medicine and precision dosing for tailored therapies.
If you would like to join our multidisciplinary team, please check our website for vacancies - we look forward to receiving your application at any time!
Yours
Professor Julia C. Stingl
What we do
Early Clinical Trials (ECT)
Since 1999 the ECTU (KliPS), as the first university-based interdisciplinary unit for early clinical trials in Germany, conducts GCP-compliant and AMG-compliant phase 0-II drug trials in adult patients and healthy volunteers, and, since 2018, also in children. In addition to a complete and proficient study service, the unit offers ultrasensitive drug analysis methods, complex pre-analytical sample preparation procedures, and validated pharmacokinetic analyses.
Medication safety
The medication process is complex and therefore fraught with a high risk of medication errors in everyday life. Ensuring and improving medication safety is therefore a daily task in patient care. It is our goal to to promote and support medication safety with suitable tools, adjusted measures, and adapted resources in everyday hospital life and in the outpatient care sector.
NETWORKING
Thanks to our integration in a tertiary care hospital and a large research campus, our interdisciplinary team can rely on multidisciplinary cooperations, a common language, and the shortest possible distances when solving complex tasks. This enables us to develop and pilot practical and sustainable solutions for everyday use.
EXPERTISE
Over two decades, we have developed knowledge, solutions, and tools to identify variability in pharmacotherapies and to derive personalized therapies. We rely on our experienced team, state-of-the-art large-scale equipment, disruptive concepts, and the use of cutting-edge technologies to answer complex questions.
