Professor receives prestigious award for public service
A senior academic at the University has received a prestigious award from the University of North Carolina (UNC) for his contribution to the field of personalised health.
Professor Munir Pirmohamed, NHS Chair of Pharmacogenetics at the University’s Wolfson Centre for Personalised Medicine, has been awarded the 2011 Award for Public Service by UNC’s Institute for Pharmacogenetics and Individualised Therapy (IPIT) for his influence in affecting policy changes at national and international level through his work developing individualised therapy.
Within the Wolfson Centre for Personalised Medicine, Professor Pirmohamed leads a team of scientists, researchers and nurses in identifying genes and pathways which dictate a patient’s positive or negative response to a drug. Radical changes to healthcare will see future treatments tailored to the individual needs of each patient in contrast to the current concept of ‘one treatment fits all’.
Professor Pirmohamed was selected by UNC for his leadership in building the UK’s personalised health network and his work in driving adverse drug reaction pharmacogenetics in Europe.
UNC also acknowledged his sustained efforts in the discovery and implementation of personalised medicine.
Professor Pirmohamed has several other links with the US, including serving on the Mayo clinic’s External Scientific Advisory Panel for their Pharmacogenetics programme, serving as a member of the International Warfarin Pharmacogenetics Consortium out of Stanford University and the Personalised Medicine Advisory Board at Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas, and through collaborations with the Hamner Institute in North Carolina and FDA National Centre for Toxicological Research in Arkansas.