Professor Jan-Willem Alffenaar

Professor Johannes (Jan-Willem) C Alffenaar is a hospital pharmacist and clinical pharmacologist appointed as Professor of Clinical Pharmacy at the Sydney Pharmacy School and Westmead Hospital. He is member of the steering group of The University of Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute and Sydney Vietnam Initiative. He is President of the international Association for Therapeutic Drug Monitoring and Clinical Toxicology. 

He received his MSc in pharmacy in 2000 and his PharmD in 2002, both at University of Groningen, The Netherlands. He received his PhD in 2009 on the topic of pharmacokinetics of antimicrobial agents: optimization and individualization of treatment. He has a leading international role in the development and clinical evaluation of therapeutic drug monitoring in infectious diseases, especially tuberculosis and invasive fungal infections. He has been the PI of national and international clinical trials investigating the pharmacokinetics of anti-infective drugs as well as the clinical application of therapeutic drug monitoring. In addition to clinical and analytical skills, he has developed implementation strategies for therapeutic drug monitoring for different settings making best use of available analytical techniques and a patient targeted approach. To facilitate personalized dosing, he uses innovative dried blood spot and point of care saliva sampling, as well as optimal sampling strategies. He has performed systematic reviews on the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of antituberculosis drugs to inform WHO technical expert advisory groups.