ESR-2 Hifza Ahmed

Medizinische Universität Wien, Austria

Host factors impacting protein binding of highly protein bound drugs in‐vivo

This PhD will set out to optimize antimicrobial therapy based on personalized medicine to determine optimal individualized dosing strategies. Only the free, meaning non-protein bound fraction of an antibiotic is active against a bacterial pathogen. Various methods for determination of protein binding do exist, but they are poorly standardized and understood in particular in the light of pathophysiological conditions in a critically ill patient. Therefore, bound and unbound antibiotic concentration in vivo will be determined in different patient populations and healthy volunteers in clinical studies. To this aim, different methods (ultrafiltration, equilibrium dialysis, microdialysis in vitro and in vivo) will be established for multiple classes of antibiotics with different protein binding.

The work will help to understand the dynamic process of protein binding in‐vivo and to characterize relationships between the unbound fraction and total drug concentration, serum‐based biomarkers of the host, and parameters from mechanistic molecule‐based modelling. This will have a major impact on the interpretation of data from therapeutic drug monitoring in patients all over the world. There will be planned secondments in Sweden and Poland.

Supervisors: Markus Zeitlinger

Interests and Hobbies: Reading books, watching tv, doing sports

Twitter: https://twitter.com/hifza_ahmed