We are
delighted to announce that the 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award of the European
Association of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics will go to Professor
Michel Eichelbaum for his outstanding contribution to the national and
international benefits of clinical pharmacology for medicine, health care and
patient safety.
Michel Eichelbaum
is one of the most cited pharmacologists in in the world. He has published
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| Professor Michel Eichelbaum |
nearly 500 articles, reviews and book chapters and numerous abstracts, and his
work has been cited over 25,000 times by other authors. His primary research
interest has been the pharmacogenetics of drug metabolizing enzymes and
transporter proteins. He was also one of the pioneers of studying various
aspects of the stereochemistry of drugs, the use of stable isotopes in clinical
pharmacology and intestinal metabolism and transport of drugs.
In 1975, he
discovered a genetic polymorphism in the oxidation of the antiarrhythmic and
oxytocic drug, sparteine, which later became known as CYP2D6 polymorphism. This
is considered his single most important scientific discovery. Later, he became
involved in research on factors involved in the regulation of drug-metabolizing
enzymes and transporters with special emphasis on nuclear receptors. This basic
research is supplemented by clinical studies in oncology with special emphasis
on breast cancer treatment, HIV, psychiatry and organ transplantation in which
the consequences of genetic polymorphisms of these proteins for drug effects
and toxicity are explored.
He was
born in Leipzig on 19 May 1941. He studied medicine at the University of
Heidelberg between 1960 and 1966, and he defended his doctoral thesis at this
University in 1968. During 1966 to 1968, he was an intern in Internal Medicine,
Surgery and Gynaecology and Obstetrics. Between 1968 and1976, he was a resident
in Internal Medicine at University Hospitals of Giessen and Bonn. From
1976-1985, he was attending physician and Associate Professor of Internal
Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology at the Department of Medicine, University of
Bonn.
He is a specialist
in both Clinical Pharmacology and in Internal Medicine. From 1985 and 21 years
onwards, he was the Director of the Dr. Margarete Fischer-Bosch Institute of
Clinical Pharmacology, Stuttgart, Germany. Simultaneously, he was Professor and
Chairman of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Tübingen, and in 2001 he
became Adjunct Professor at the University of Adelaide, Australia.
During his career,
Michel Eichelbaum has obtained several Research Fellowships. During 1970-1971, he worked in the Laboratory of Chemical
Pharmacology, National Heart and Lung Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA, together with Drs. B.B. Brodie and J.R.
Gillette. From 1973-1974, he was working at the Department of Clinical
Pharmacology, Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, together with
Professor Folke Sjöqvist, and from 1995-1996 he was a Visiting Professor at the
Department of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology, University of Adelaide,
Australia. Michel Eichelbaum has received numerous awards and honours. This
year, he was honoured with the Oscar B. Hunter Memorial Award in Therapeutics
from the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. He is the
third European to receive this prize.
The EACPT was founded 22 years ago and now includes
as members all national organisations for clinical pharmacology in Europe, as
well as organisations from further afield internationally. The EACPT aims to
provide educational and scientific support for the more than 4000 individual
professionals interested in clinical pharmacology and therapeutics throughout
the European region, with its congresses attended by a global audience. The
EACPT also advises policy makers on how the specialty can contribute to human
health and wealth.
