The new research chair at the Faculty of Medicine will be established at the University Children’s Hospital Basel (UKBB), where a Department of Clinical Pharmacology in Pediatrics will be established. The generous funding of the Eckenstein-Geigy Foundation is sponsoring the research and development of medicines for children and adolescents. Today, many medicines administered to children need to be tested more extensively.
Currently, Prof. Johannes van den Anker, holder of the new Eckenstein-Geigy Professorship in Pediatric Pharmacology, is Executive Director of the Pediatric Pharmacology Research Programm and Director of the Division of Pediatric Clinical Pharmacology at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC. He is furthermore Professor at the George Washington University in Washington and at the John Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, as well as at the Erasmus MC-Sophia Children’s Hospital in Rotterdam.
Van den Anker was born in Schiedam (Netherlands) in 1957; he first studied economics and then continued to study medicine in Rotterdam. He achieved his Pediatric Residency in 1988 and a Fellowship in Neonatology in 1991. In 1995 he completed his Doctorate with a thesis on Pharmacology. From 1997 to 2001, he was as Director of the Division of Neonatology and Associate Professor at the University of Rotterdam. In 2001 he became Director of the Division of Pediatric Clinical Pharmacology and Medical Toxicology at the Columbus Children’s Hospital in Ohio, while also holding a professorship at Ohio State University.
Building a Research Programm
Van den Anker’s research focuses on the variation in drug response in children and looks specifically at the influence growth and development have on the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of drugs. He is the author of numerous publications and member of many societies in Europe and the US. In Basel, he will establish the first translational research programm for pediatric pharmacology, with the aim to study effective drugs for children, not only in Western countries but also in poor, underserved regions of the world. Van der Anker has dual citizenship in the Netherlands and the US; he will take up his professorship January 1st, 2014.
Further Information
Dr. Conrad E. Müller, CEO Universitäts-Kinderspital beider Basel UKBB, Tel. 061 704 17 07, Email: conrad.mueller@ukbb.ch
Matthias Geering, Head of Communications & Marketing, University of Basel, Tel. 061 267 35 75 / mobil: +41 (0)79 269 70 71, E-Mail: matthias.geering@unibas.ch