On the trail of medication intake

"When I get the job, we'll get a cat", said Andrea Burden to her husband when she submitted her application for an assistant professorship at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences (D-CHAB) at ETH Zurich. And she got the position. Since May, the 35-year-old scientist has been Head of the Chair of Pharmacoepidemiology at D-CHAB. “I had an offer from another university at the same time," said Burden. "However, I chose ETH Zurich because of the exciting opportunity to set up my own research group here and establish the field of pharmacoepidemiology at the ETH Zurich”.

She already has two PhD students working in her group, and her research field, which she says herself is almost unpronounceable in name, is already becoming better known in Switzerland. In addition to her work at ETH Zurich, she spends one day a week at the Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University Hospital Zurich (USZ). There she exchanges information with doctors, clinic staff and pharmacists. The USZ hopes that Burden's research will enable studies on how to use drugs more effectively in patients in the future. With this cooperation, which is supported by the Swiss Pharmacists Association (PharmaSuisse) ETH Zurich would like to further expand its thematic priority "Medicine and Medical Technology" by promoting the clinical training and further education for pharmacists at the ETH Zurich.

Research based on health data

Using pharmacoepidemiology - or "pharmacoepi", as Andrea Burden lovingly abbreviates it - scientists are investigating the effectiveness of drugs in selected groups of patients. Data from public health systems, hospitals, pharmacies or nursing homes for elderly, for example, serve as a basis.

Burden is currently investigating which medicines work best in chronic diseases such as osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis, and how to get the right medications to the right patients to maximize benefits and minimize harms. The goal is to improve patient care by doing research that can inform clinicians, pharmacists and policy-makers.

"The most important basis for my work is a reliable and consistent database," says Burden. For her research her home country, Canada, with its public health system that records the entire medical history of each individual, proved to be ideal. However, “it’s really about matching the right data to the right research question” as in some countries data are collected according to a different set of parameters from a variety of sources - from hospitals to pharmacies to insurance companies. In addition, there are data protection regulations that make access difficult.

Constant change as a constant

As a young girl, Andrea Burden never dreamed that one day she would be working in science. "My parents do not have academic training and didn't expect anything from me in this respect," she said. However, her parents had shown her how to tackle life courageously, think critically and make the best of every situation. Her father not only built the house in Scarborough, a district of Toronto where she grew up, but also reoriented himself regularly professionally. After his release from the Canadian Air Force, he worked in computer repairs  and then switched to sales. Similarly, her mother started in security at the Toronto Zoo but quickly moved to working in the head office for the CEO.

The young researcher is similarly open to change. When her high school teacher asked the gifted student why she would not apply to university instead of an apprenticeship, she immediately took up the idea. "As is typical for teenagers, I had hardly thought about my future until then," she said frankly. "So, I spontaneously applied for a bachelor's degree in psychology and sociology at the University of Toronto.”

Master Thesis in Criminology

With success: Step by step, she laid the foundation for her work today. During her bachelor's degree she completed her thesis with Professor David Nussbaum, a psychology professor specializing in criminal psychology, whose work inspired her. In her master's thesis, she continued to research how lack of impulse control in decision-making is related to crime and addiction.

She was then led to the department of pharmaceutical sciences for her doctoral thesis. While a departure from her previous work, Professor Suzanne Cadarette, a pharmacoepidemiology professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy in Toronto, suggested to Andrea Burden that she use her experience with decision-making processes to study why some people take medication regularly and others do not. This knowledge could help train pharmacists in how to deal with patients so that they can provide more targeted advice in the future and point out the possible consequences of irregular use.

After her doctoral thesis, Burden was awarded a postdoctoral scholarship from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research - and was now faced with the question of where to continue her scientific career in pharmacoepidemiology. "My friends expected me to go to the USA," says the scientist. But she surprised everyone with her decision: "I wanted to leave my own culture and learn new things about myself and the world. Her final choice was the Maastricht University Medical Centre (MUMC).

A landmark decision

A decision that would once again give her life a completely different direction. Hardly had she arrived in Maastricht when she met her husband in a Dutch language course. "Contrary to plan, I will not return to Canada soon. He comes from Italy, so we will probably stay in Europe". Their wedding, in summer 2018, was celebrated near his hometown Lecco at Lake Como.

And what happened to the cat? "So far nothing. We still don’t have a cat," says animal-loving Andrea Burden. "But I hope that such a four-legged friend will move in very soon."