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At the dawn of
my carreer two ambitions remain: To improve the treatment of our
patients and to give new directions in the treatment of chronic liver
diseases.
The first aim is simple but also difficult. Simple because thanks to
the renown of our institute we are often invited to participate in the
large, International clinical trials. This gives our patients the
chance to benefit early from new drugs. Thus, we were among the first
centers gaining experience with the use of the novel, pegylated
interferons in the treatment of hepatitis B or C (pdf on hepatitis B; pdf
on hepatitis C). Difficult, because three partners are needed: a
physician experienced in running trials, nursing staff willing to
accept the additional charge of contributing to patient and data
management and - last but not least - patients willing to take the risk
of participating in a trial with all its unknowns. Why you should (not)
participate in a trial is explained on another webpage. There is a unfortunately a
fourth partner - who renders things extremely difficult - this is the
Swiss authorities. If Swissmedic and all the other federal, cantonal
and communal regulators continue in this vein, then there will be no
patient allowed in a clinical trial in Switzerland in ten years (email).
The second aim keeps me young: thanks to enthusiastic doctoral students
we can contribute to the international literature and are funded by the
SNF. Last year, we were able to show that an old drug (rapamycin,
marketed as Rapamune) dramatically inhibits fibrogenesis in a rat model
of cirrhosis (pdf). My current PhD student, Dr. M.
Neef took this one step further in demonstrating that even in
established cirrhosis substantial improvement in hemodynamics, function
and histology can be achieved. We plan to carry these findings to
patients this year already.
The same Dr. Neef just has achieved and published a very nice study
where he not only investigated the effect of the famous Glivec on
fibrogenesis, but where he also made a very important methodological
point: studies on fibrogenesis should approach the clinical situation
as closely as possible (pdf). |
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Stiftung
für
Leberkrankheiten
Institut für Klinische Pharmakologie
Universität Bern
Murtenstrasse 35,
Postfach 49
3010 Bern
0041 (0)31 632 31 91
Info@leberstiftung.ch |
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