It was a real pleasure to meet Gareth Veal at last years’ congress and to hear about the national TDM programme to support paediatric oncology patients in the UK. The programme was awarded an important grant last year, reflecting the excellent work done by this research group to develop a service that is solicited and highly valued by clinicians nationwide. Gareth shares about the programme, some innovative approaches the group is developing, novel technologies to keep an eye on and his vision for the future of TDM.

Gareth Veal

Newcastle University

Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Last year I read a really impressive contribution to the Compass from young scientist, Samiksha Ghimire. She described her ambitious PhD project which aimed to implement and evaluate a TDM programme for anti-tuberculosis drugs in Nepal, an endemic setting, using alternative sampling strategies. I was literally on the edge of my seat reading this piece, impressed at the high relevance of the project, especially since Nepal is her home country, and also Samiksha’s clarity and maturity as a PhD student: I won’t give away how the piece concludes, but want to highlight that I found it very impressive the way that Samiksha faced the very real challenges that emerged in the project at that point in time. This month we hear from Samiksha, and, again, I was very impressed with her orientation with innovative technologies in TDM, some of which we haven’t heard about before in these interviews. In my search for Samiksha’s email, I came across the story of how she became an Eric Bleumink Fund Scholar, which is also very impressive. Congratulations on your achievements Samiksha!

Samiksha Ghimire

University Medical Center Groningen

University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands

This month we hear from Marina Venzon Antunes, young scientist and co-chair of the upcoming IATDMCT Congress in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. Marina shares about her work at the Feevale University where they are developing various assays and approaches using alternative sampling strategies, in the aim to facilitate access in a context where her lab is one of few reference centres for TDM in the country.

Marina Venzon Antunes

Professor of Biomedicine

Feevale University, Novo Hamburgo, Brazil

This month we highlight a piece in the September Compass by Jessica Ryan and Jenny Martin, written on behalf of the TDM in Oncology Committee. It is an overview on approaches to chemotherapy dosing in the obese child that brings together data from several reviews. Clearance of some drugs is affected while for others it appears not to be. Further, adiposity may influence tumour responsiveness to chemotherapy. However, the authors highlight the lack of data specific to this special population which is becoming more prevalent.

Jessica Ryan and Jennifer Martin

University of Newcastle and Hunter New England Health

Newcastle, Australia