Meet our Scientific Advisory Board: Adam Cohen

Adam Cohen is a physician and a clinical pharmacologist. He was a Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and until 2018 was CEO of the Center for Human Drug Research Foundation. He is currently working as an Advisor at LUMC (Leiden University Medical Center).

What is your field of expertise?

I am a physician and a clinical pharmacologist. So, my expertise is about what medicines do to the functioning of the human body in health and disease and how the body handles these foreign substances. Traditionally clinical pharmacologists focus on how medicines work, that is how they exert their mechanism of action, but that does not always predict that they help, which means that they improve functioning of feelings or survival of a patient. For this we need new methodology, and this is what my research focussed on. Additionally, I am a doctor seeing actual patients and I have always kept doing that because this is really what it is about, and one can easily get lost wandering through the ivory tower of academia if not exposed to real life and illness.

What do you expect from PREMIER?

When medicines are given to patients there is the balance between efficacy and side effects that drives one’s decisions or proposals to the patient. Increasingly we also involve cost to society, be it financial or environmental. I expect Premier to help reducing the societal footprint of drug treatment.

Why did you agree to be part of the SAB?

I like to contribute to this effort, which, although it does not directly relate to what I do, has strong links. After all medicines get into the environment through excretion and metabolism which is something I know a little about. Also, I am concerned about the environment and know that the load of residues from medicines is starting to affect our water supply and I hope that in this way I can be of some help.

What do you think are the current gaps in the/your field that PREMIER could fulfil?

In my field the environmental impact of a certain molecule is not really what we are involved with so raising awareness is already good.

How could society at large benefit from the PREMIER products?

By indicating which existing medicines are an environmental risk (and given a choice may be deprioritized in favour of compounds with less environment damage). Also, by establishing criteria that will make future medicines have a lowered environmental impact.