PhD Position in Neonatal Clinical Pharmacology: Drug Exposure-Response Modelling in Critically Ill Neonates

This PhD project is part of the research line on developmental pharmacology and covers a collaboration of the Department of Development and Regeneration and the Department of Pharmaceutical and Pharmacological Sciences (KU Leuven), and the Neonatal intensive care unit (University Hospitals Leuven).

Project

Pharmacotherapy in neonatal intensive care remains challenging because the relationship between drug exposure (pharmacokinetics, PK) and drug effects (pharmacodynamics, PD) is often poorly understood. This PhD project aims to improve our understanding of how commonly used medication affects critically ill neonates by combining unique clinical real-world datasets, advanced bedside (neuro)monitoring and state-of-the-art pharmacometric modelling approaches. The research will focus on neuroactive drugs like doxapram, and analgosedatives such as fentanyl and dexmedetomidine, and will apply population PKPD and/or physiologically based PK-PD (PBPK-PD) modelling to characterize exposure-response relationships and support evidence-based dosing in neonates. 

What will you do?

As a PhD candidate, you will:

• Analyze existing pharmacokinetic and clinical datasets from neonatal intensive care units
• Integrate drug concentration data with pharmacodynamic endpoints and bedside monitoring data, including cerebral oxygenation and brain activity measurements;
• Develop, evaluate and apply population PKPD and/or PBPK-PD models;
• Investigate exposure-response relationships and quantify drug effects in neonates;
• Explore literature on developmental cerebral PD, its biological mechanisms, and knowledge gaps;
• Collaborate with clinicians, pharmacologists, pharmacometricians and engineers in an interdisciplinary research environment;
• Write a FWO PhD fellowship grant proposal with support of the promotorteam
• Present your findings at international conferences and publish in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Profile

We are looking for a highly motivated candidate with:

• A Master's degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences, Biomedical Sciences, Medicine, Drug Development, Bioengineering, Statistics, Applied Mathematics or a related discipline;
• A strong interest in clinical pharmacology, pharmacometrics and translational research;
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills;
• Affinity for quantitative data analysis and modelling;
• Excellent written and spoken English;
• The ability to work independently as well as within an interdisciplinary team

The following qualifications are considered strong assets:

• Experience in pharmacometrics;
• Experience with population PK, PKPD or PBPK modelling;
• Experience with software such as NONMEM, OSP Suite, Monolix, Simcyp, nlmixr or similar platforms;
• Programming skills in R, MATLAB and/or Python;
• Experience with analysis of physiological or biomedical data.

Offer

We offer: 

Interested?

For more information please contact Prof. dr. Anne Smits, mail: [email protected] or Prof. dr. Pieter Annaert, mail: [email protected].

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