Laure Elens

I started my researches in the field of pharmacogenetics of immunosuppressive treatments 15 years ago, during my master degree (2005-2006). My master project has made my passion for drug PK instinctive. I was interested in understanding the factors that make tacrolimus to accumulate considerably in the hepatic tissue of some patients whereas it was cleared rapidly in others; therefore, affecting the individual therapeutic response to the drug. These achievements made me wanted to extend my knowledge to other drugs and other body compartments. Mainly, when I started my PhD, exploring anti-HIV drugs and their accumulation in PBMCs was my next target. Along the years, I saw the PK world around me evolving from a descriptive and explanatory tool towards a predictive modelling patientcentred method and I got the feeling that I had also to progress. After my postdoctoral stay in Rotterdam (2010-2012), my subsequent personal defy was thus to build a new research group to reach my ambitions. Since 2013, my team, the integrated Pharmacometrics, Pharmacogenetics, Pharmacokinetcs [PMGK] research group, is working on different projects combining clinical, experimental, cellular and molecular approaches to understand the diversity of pharmacological responses. In this framework, my ambition is now to initiate a new horizon in pharmacotherapy integrating host factors in complex models to predict drug metabolism and response to therapy. My current desire is to develop an original novel approach that will combine multiple ground-breaking methods into an integrated pioneering concept aiming at predicting and understanding the PK behavior of drugs and its link with the pharmacological response for a better management of pharmacotherapy. I have faith that this multidimensional framework will generate a real operational network for biological understanding and predictability of drug behavior.