RESEARCH AND TEACHING
Person-to-person and population variability in therapeutic and side effects of drugs introduces barriers and much uncertainty in choosing the optimal drug and dosing regimen. As a translational scientist, Ozdemir worked at the junction between the laboratory and clinical practice focusing on questions pertaining to individualization of drug therapy in schizophrenia and depression:
- Why do individuals and populations vary markedly in their response to pharmaceutical interventions (e.g., antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs)?
- Do genetic factors and drug-drug interactions play a role?
This applied medical research, together with the social, ethical and science policy dilemmas that emerged over the past decade from personalized medicine and the new technological advances in psychopharmacology, collectively led to an interest and appreciation for social studies of omics technologies and innovations, as inquiries that can provide a rigorous and deeper understanding of the lived scientific practice, and the knowledge trajectories from the laboratory to society. Social studies of science and technology can also help discern the factors that impact innovation uptake, and contribute to evidence based policy making.
With this overarching transdisciplinary integrative focus, Vural initiated empirical analysis of personalized medicine in parallel to his academic clinical pharmacology and pharmacogenetics research program in 2004. This work led to a series of reports on personalized medicine ethics, knowledge translation and policy. In 2007, with the funding (as principal investigator) of a federal operating grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, he moved on to full-time independent research in science policy, knowledge translation and evaluation of -omics spectrum health technologies (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics). He is funded by a FRSQ Investigator Salary Award (2008-2012) for science and society research in personalization of health interventions (pharmacogenomics, nutrigenomics, pharmacoproteomics) and knowledge translation in these emerging omics fields.