SDU professor receives international award for groundbreaking drug research

Professor Tore Bjerregaard Stage from the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) has been awarded the Leon I. Goldberg Early Investigator Award by the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (ASCPT).

The award is presented to early-career researchers who have made significant contributions to clinical pharmacology or translational science. Tore Bjerregaard Stage received the award at ASCPT’s annual meeting in Washington D.C. on 29 May, where he was also invited to give an award lecture.

From lab bench to patients

Tore Bjerregaard Stage is head of research at the Clinical Pharmacology, Pharmacy and Environmental Medicine unit at SDU’s Department of Public Health. Here, researchers combine cell-based models, clinical studies and registry data to understand why patients respond differently to the same medication – and how to reduce the risk of serious side effects.

One example is the team’s work on antibiotics and blood thinners, where they have shown how antibiotics such as dicloxacillin and flucloxacillin can diminish the effect of warfarin.
Another line of research focuses on nerve damage caused by chemotherapy. Recently, the group identified a new biomarker that may help predict which patients are likely to develop side effects – a finding currently being validated in a large clinical trial.

Collective effort behind the recognition

Although the award is given to an individual, Tore Bjerregaard Stage highlights the team effort behind the research:

– This award is really a recognition of the group and a reflection of many years of national and international collaboration. I’ve been fortunate to work with talented mentors and colleagues who have made key contributions leading to this award. Conducting research at this level is only possible because we work as a team, he says.

International network and strong research profile
Since starting as a postdoc in 2017, Tore Stage has developed an independent and high-profile research line. He is now a professor and research leader at SDU and has received funding from the Lundbeck Foundation, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, Innovation Fund Denmark and the Independent Research Fund Denmark.

With more than 70 research articles and collaborators in the US, Sweden and Germany, he is already a prominent figure in the international research community.

Focusing on future treatments

With the award in hand, Tore Bjerregaard Stage and his colleagues continue their efforts to uncover why medicines work differently in different people – and how to make treatments safer and more effective:

– We are still far from being able to predict all side effects, but we’re learning more all the time. I often say we’re assembling a (very large) puzzle that, once completed, will allow us to predict how an individual will respond to a medicine before we begin treatment. So we need to add one piece at a time – and even the small contributions matter as we work towards completing the puzzle. In the end, what really matters is that we can turn our findings into tangible improvements for patients, he says.