Promotie onderzoek

The (positive) effects of antihypertensive drugs in the cardiovascular risk management are undoubted. However, like all drugs, antihypertensive drugs also have negative side-effects. Especially the elderly, are more susceptible for these adverse effects. It's not clear whether the benefits outweight the risks. So is it possible to deprescribe antihypertensive drugs and minimise risks for adverse events, while maintining blood-pressure levels in accordance with guidelines?  

The aim of this project is to provide insight in the use of biologicals, including biosimilars, in clinical practice and add to the safe and effective use of these agents. We also provide guidance on the implementation of biosimilars in clinical practice from the perspective of different stakeholders including prescribers, pharmacists and patients.

New medicines are evaluated by registration authorities in order to assess their benefit-risk-balance. However, not every new medicine has to have an added therapeutic value compared to already available medicines. The real clinical relevance of new medicine is therefore sometimes unclear. In this research project, we want to investigate the views of healthcare professionals (HCPs) on clinical relevance of new medicines in primary care. We will discuss healthcare professionals’ views on clinical relevance of new COPD and T2DM medicines and also describe the reasons for prescribing new medicines, which is often not in line with guideline recommendations. Finally, we want to investigate how healthcare professionals assess the clinical relevance of medicines that obtained market access in the last years, and to investigate which pharmaceutical gaps (in other words: which diseases cannot be properly treated and would demand new therapies) HCPs identify in their daily practice. 

Drug repositioning is the application of existing drugs to new indications. We want to find out if it is possible to find new potentially effective drugs against individual tumors based on their unique gene expression patterns.