A Personal Reflection from Professor Michael Oellerich

Therapeutic drug monitoring is an interdisciplinary field and needs a scientific platform. The TDM journal has been highly successful in promoting personalized pharmacotherapy. It was a great privilege and challenge to further successfully develop the TDM journal founded by Charles Pippenger in 1979. Over the past 15 years, the excellent cooperation with our international Editorial Board, the Associate Editors, and the North American office was a rewarding experience. We were able to keep the Impact Factor within a range of 1.9 and 3.1 with a current positive trend.

Of note, there is an increasing competition by other, in particular Open Access, journals that increasingly publish studies on pharmacokinetics, pharmacogenetics, and pharmacodynamics. Therefore, it will be very important to further increase the international visibility of the journal, in particular in the field of precision and personalized medicine. It will be important to attract more excellent research articles to further improve the Impact Factor. The number of papers from North America has regretfully recently declined and this trend should be reversed. More high-caliber review and opinion papers are needed as well as attractive special issues. Despite these challenges, the current pace of innovation, the flood of new technologies and advances in molecular diagnostics provide an environment in which our journal has an excellent chance to grow.

Thank you Michael Oellerich
By Professor Philip D. Walson
Founding Member and Former President IATDMCT
TDM Editorial Board member

Michael Oellerich, a professor at the Georg-August-University in Goettingen, Germany, is a founding member of IATDMCT and has been Editor-in-Chief of the journal “Therapeutic Drug Monitoring” since 2003. He was Chairman of the 4th International Congress of Therapeutic Drug Monitoring and Clinical Toxicology which was successfully held in Vienna in 1995, and subsequently President of IATDMCT from 1997 to 1999. He received the IATDMCT Award in Recognition of Exceptional Contributions to the Implementation of the Goals of the Society in Cairns in 1999, and the IATDMCT Charles Pippenger Award for Outstanding Contributions to Therapeutic Drug Monitoring in Washington, D.C. in 2001.

During the past 15 years, he has handled more than 2,000 manuscripts submitted to Therapeutic Drug Monitoring from all over the world except for the Americas. The manuscript processing was supported by the current Associate Editor Philip Patsalos, the efficient Editorial Manager Hannah Hempstead and the excellent editorial board. The rejection rate was approximately 49%. The Impact Factor during his editorship fluctuated between 1.9 and 3.1 with a current positive trend. He established the electronic submission platform and a plagiarism screen. His multiple fellowships (FACB, FAMM, FFPath (RCPI), FRCPath) have been a good opportunity for international liaisons. Michael Oellerich has published more than 460 articles, 64 of which appeared in our journal Therapeutic Drug Monitoring. His main research interest is in immunosuppressive drug monitoring, advanced personalized diagnostics using tandem mass spectrometry, and new genomic technologies like next-generation sequencing and droplet digital PCR. More recently, he was involved in the development of new molecular biomarkers based on circulating cell-free DNA in transplantation and cancer. Publications of further research in personalized and precision medicine related to therapeutic drug monitoring will be an excellent opportunity for our journal to grow.