German version
Suitable drugs are available for treating numerous diseases, enabling patients to recover completely or alleviate their suffering. However, still many conditions are caused by disorders or injuries for which a cure is currently unavailable.
These include diseases that damage the nervous system. These can often lead to severe, lifelong impairments. Examples are paraplegia or blindness after injuries to the central nervous system or neuropathies caused by axonal injury in the peripheral nervous system. A primary research focus of the Center for Pharmacology is the development of new regenerative therapies to offer approaches for treating such diseases and preventing permanent damage.
Complementary to this, optimizing already clinically approved and established drug therapies is another significant research interest. There are still numerous cases in which approved drugs show efficacy only in some patients. An additional percentage suffer from severe adverse side effects. The reasons for this are the individual characteristics of the genetic material, lifestyle habits, and the type and severity of the disease, which differ between patients. These individual differences can influence the absorption and degradation of drugs and the interactions of the compounds with their target structures.
To ensure the best possible efficacy combined with good tolerability and to develop new target structures for active substances, scientists at the Center for Pharmacology investigate the interaction of various drugs and chemical compounds. These primarily include medically relevant enzymes, transporters, and channel proteins. The results of this research may help to optimize drug therapies in the future.
