2020 Belgium winner

The role of the human gut microbiota in health, disease and pharmacotherapy is only beginning to be understood. Although it is now well-documented that interactions between host and microbiome can significantly impact pharmacotherapy and modulate clinical outcomes, we are still lacking in-depth investigations to better comprehend this relationship and identify opportunity for interventions in clinical practice whilst filling existing knowledge gaps.

The research project we propose here, by combining complementary expertise in microbiota, pharmacokinetics, pharmacometrics, precision pharmacotherapy, drug monitoring, clinical chemistry and abdominal clinical response, may pave the way to developing new evidence based clinical interventions for transplant patients.

Furthermore, because the research project presented is an extension of an already ongoing larger project investigating another immunosuppressor, we expect that the body of data produced here will constitute a valuable complement to the current body of research and thus allow rapid translation in clinics. We expect that this multidisciplinary project will contribute to significant improvements in the prediction algorithms currently used for MPA dosage recommendations.

Achieving that objective is critical considering the problematic inter- and intra-individual PK variabilities and would warrant reductions in the occurrence of graft rejections and/or toxicity.