Leading up to this years’ Congress, we will hear from several of our colleagues from Brazil. This month we hear from Rafael Lanaro, from the Poison Control Centre of Campinas University. Campinas is a public research university in the state of São Paulo, consistently ranked among the top in Brazil and Latin America. The Poison’s Centre provides analytics services for emergencies to cover the metropolitan region of Campinas of 3 million (!) inhabitants. Rafael is an impressive Young Scientist, and his interview is the second in our series of Brazilian colleagues, following the December interview with congress co-chair Marina Venzon Antunes.

Rafael Lanaro
Lead Toxicologist, Academic
Poison Control Center, University of Campinas, BR

Young Scientists represent almost half of IATDMCT members. We make an important contribution to our organization and, of course, represent the future of science in the field. 

Young Scientists Night out in Brisbane, 2018

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