Professor Matthias Schwab is the new director of the Institute for Clinical Pharmacology in Stuttgart

Stuttgart – Januar 11, 2007

On January 1, 2007, Professor Matthias Schwab took up his post as director of the Dr. Margarete Fischer-Bosch Institute for Clinical Pharmacology (IKP). Robert Bosch Stiftung and Eberhard Karl University in Tübingen jointly appointed Schwab to the post. In addition to heading this world-famous institute, he also takes up the chair of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Tübingen. Professor Schwab follows Professor Michel Eichelbaum, who ran the IKP from 1985 until his retirement in 2006.

Matthias Schwab (b. 1963) returns to his old place of work after a period spent working at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, USA. After training as a specialist in pediatrics and adolescent medicine in Nuremberg and Erlangen, he worked at the IKP for approximately ten years – first as a scientist and, after qualifying as a specialist in clinical pharmacology, as a senior physician. During this period he acquired his lecturing qualification in clinical pharmacology and pediatric pharmacology at the University of Tübingen with a thesis on the significance of genetic polymorphism of the P glycoprotein and thiopurine S methyl transferase for the development and treatment of chronic inflammatory bowel disease. In 2006, he declined a call to the chair of clinical pharmacology at the Medical University of Innsbruck.

Professor Schwab's scientific specialty is the field of pharmacogenomics. In this branch of clinical pharmacology, researchers study the extent to which genetic factors are responsible for individual variations in the efficacy of medication in different patients. Dr. Schwab has authored and co-authored over 100 specialist articles in this field and in related areas of clinical pharmacology. In 2005, he received the Galenus von Pergamon Prize for his work on the genetic background of the renal toxicity of cyclosporin after kidney transplants. In 2004, he received the Friedrich Hartmut-Dost Prize of the German Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapy for his scientific work.

To mark the occasion of her 80th birthday, Dr. Margarete Fischer-Bosch, the eldest daughter of Robert Bosch, endowed three million Deutschmarks in 1968 for the founding of a clinical pharmacology institute at Robert Bosch Krankenhaus (RBK). Since then, research at the IKP has been closely related to clinical work and research at the RBK, so that scientific work in both institutions always focuses on improving patient care. The IKP has approximately 70 employees and is one of the largest and most frequently quoted academic research facilities for clinical pharmacology worldwide. It is also the largest clinical pharmacology institute in Germany outside the pharmaceutical industry. Robert Bosch Stiftung provides app. 4.5 million euros in annual research funding to the IKP and RBK.