Drug treatment – Erik Eliasson research group

Our research aims to better understand and predict the individual patient response to drug treatment. There is considerable variability between individuals that may include therapeutic failures or severe adverse drug reactions at standard dosing.

Photo of research group - Erik Eliasson.

Our research

Precision Medicine means individualisation of drug treatment, especially with regards to individual drug target expression and the corresponding choice of treatment. For many decades, the corresponding clinical pharmacology message has been to use the right drug, for the right patient at the right dose. Finding the right dose for individual patients requires an understanding of drug disposition and the relationship between drug exposure levels to efficacy and toxicity. Here, our discipline aims to gain better insight and provide the scientific evidence for improved patient care. 

In this team, there are three main lines of research:

The first relates to life-threatening infections and the optimal dose regimen of critical antibiotics for individual patients, and how to best monitor this. The research builds on a multidisciplinary collaboration with expert colleagues in critical care, infectious medicine, microbiology, and pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic (PKPD) modelling. 

The second line of work concerns individual factors, including genetics, that impact on drug treatment against breast cancer, and how dose requirements of commonly used drugs will differ between patients to optimise the difficult balance between tolerability and effective treatment. Again, the work relies on a long-standing collaboration with oncologists, epidemiologists, and lab-analytical expertise. 

The third research collaboration has started more recently and focus on the pharmacokinetics, efficacy and safety of specific drugs or drug candidates that interact with incorrectly folded proteins, and thereby prevents protein aggregation/precipitation to disturb cellular function. Present PK applications are cystic fibrosis and Alzheimer’s disease. 

Senior collaborators (professors/associate professors) include: Jenny BergqvistOla BlennowKamila CzeneMarike GabrielsonChristian GiskePer HallJanne JohanssonVolker LauschkeJonatan LindhSara MargolinJohan PeterssonTerezia Pincikova, Staffan RosenborgKatarina WestlingBengt Winblad (Stockholm), and Elisabet NielsenMia Wadelius (Uppsala), Henrik Green (Linköping), Espen Molden (Oslo).

Publications

Selected publications

Research techniques

Bioanalysis mainly LC-MS/MS, microdialysis, drug metabolism in vitro/in vivo, pharmacokinetic analysis and popPK modelling, genotyping, NGS, bioinformatics, prediction of functional impact and phenotyping of genetic variants, GCP, register-based studies on drug dispensation, treatment efficacy and adverse drug reactions.