Wolfgang Sadee, Dr.rer.nat 

A major area of research in the laboratory of Wolfgang Sadée, Dr.rer.nat, is pharmacogenetics-pharmacogenomics – determining whether genetic factors cause variable drug response among patients, including drug efficacy and toxicity.

“By applying emerging principles in pharmacogenomics – finding functional genetic variants in target genes – we expect to determine genetic factors in disease progression and therapeutic response,” says Sadée, who directs the OSU Program in Pharmacogenomics. Sadée is also professor and chair of the OSU Department of Pharmacology, and director of the OSU School of Biomedical Science. His group has developed a pharmacogenomics core laboratory for high-throughput genotyping and analysis of gene expression. 

“Novel technologies enable large-scale experiments even in small laboratory settings. Applied to pharmacogenomics, this opens opportunities for better therapy tailored to the genetic makeup of each individual patient,” adds Sadée, a member of the OSU Comprehensive Cancer Center.

“Our goal is to develop comprehensive geno-typing panels for routine use along with ongoing clinical trials in cancer chemotherapy, an area of strength at OSU,” he continues. “This will help us understand why some patients respond while others do not, and why some experience severe side effects.”

In addition, Sadée says, broad-scale analysis of gene expression in cancer tissue can predict treatment outcomes and help guide novel drug design.

One ongoing laboratory study with cancer relevance examines membrane transporters encoded by multiple diverse gene families containing some 500 human genes. These represent drug targets and determine access of drugs to their target tissues. Sadée’s team is establishing an integrated map of these membrane proteins as they are expressed in tissues and determining drug transport into the cancer target.

“We hypothesize that these functions are factors in drug sensitivity and resistance in cancer tissue,” Sadée says. “Further, we are developing an approach for interpreting expression of human genes in cancer cells in vivo and in vitro, for diagnosis and drug discovery.”

Sadée says other projects involving multiple investigators include pharmacogenetic studies of receptors, enzymes and transporters relevant to treating coronary artery disease and central nervous system disorders such as schizophrenia and drug addiction. Work with clinical scientists in the OSU Davis Heart and Lung Research Institute addresses susceptibility genes for coronary artery disease and drug response to statin treatment.