Jörg Kriegsmann: What Happens Between the Tablet and Its Effect

A tablet can be described down to the milligram. The person who takes it brings much more to the table. With Prof. Dr. med. Dr. phil. Jörg Kriegsmann, neotes welcomes a new member to its scientific advisory board, who studies these individual differences.

Everything is neatly regulated on a medication package: name, active ingredient, dosage. In the body, things become more personal.

Because there, the preparation meets a person with a specific metabolism, possibly other medications, and their own genetic makeup. This is why the same tablet can have different effects on two people.

Part of the explanation lies in tiny variations in our genetic code. They can influence how the body processes or transports medications. Pharmacogenetics studies these connections. For certain combinations of genes and active ingredients, the findings can be relevant for medical treatment. The US food and drug agency FDA documents such connections.

For Jörg Kriegsmann, molecular differences have been part of his field of work for many years. The specialist in pathology deals with information that only becomes apparent upon a very close look at tissue, cells, and genetic variants.

How a genetic difference can be weighed

This close look can initially be imagined in the most classic way: a laboratory, a tissue sample, a microscope.

But modern molecular diagnostics has other tools. One of them uses a property we know well from everyday life: different things can weigh different amounts. This also applies to molecules.

In a specialist chapter published in 2024, Kriegsmann and his co-authors describe how certain genetic variants can be analyzed using mass spectrometry. The process is called MALDI-TOF. Simply put, molecular masses are used to distinguish selected variants.

What sounds like a very specialized laboratory topic leads to everyday questions. The authors, for example, deal with genetic connections in fat and vitamin metabolism, as well as intolerances. Specialist chapter "Predictive Genomics", 2024.

This is where nutrigenetics comes into play. It studies how genetic differences can be connected to the processing of nutrients.

However, a personal dietary recommendation cannot automatically be read from this. For that, genetic information must be combined with other findings and the actual dietary situation. The authors of the specialist chapter also emphasize this combined view.

Two doctoral titles, two perspectives

Kriegsmann's resume holds an unusual detail alongside laboratory procedures and medical stations: He has doctorates in medicine and philosophy. His philosophical work belongs to the field of ethics.

For someone who deals with increasingly precise information about people, this is a remarkable combination.

Because with every additional measurement possibility, a question also arises: What helps the person we are learning more about?

A laboratory result can be precise and still need explanation. Which statement is well supported? What significance does it have in the concrete case? What decision can be derived from it?

For medications, for example, other medications and the function of the organs are part of the assessment. The consequences of a genetic finding for a treatment are decided by the treating doctor.

The FDA also emphasizes that genetic makeup is one of several influencing factors.

Good diagnostics therefore also includes an understandable conversation about the significance of the result.

From Alabama to Trier – and to the neotes advisory board

Kriegsmann's scientific path led him to the USA after his medical studies in Jena, among other places: In 1993/94, he was a DAAD scholarship holder at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. There, he deepened his knowledge of molecular biology. In 1998, the appointment followed as a professor of pathology in Mainz. Later, Trier became the center of his diagnostic activity.

Today, he is, among other things, the managing director of Proteopath GmbH. At the Danube Private University in Krems, he works as the research vice-dean of human medicine and director of the Center for Pathology. His current university functions are listed at the DPU.

With this experience, he strengthens the scientific advisory board of neotes.

For us, his perspective is valuable because it brings together molecular details and their medical assessment. That is exactly where a measurement becomes understandable information about an individual person.

The medication package remains the same for many people. What significance a finding has for you deserves a personal look.

Meet Jörg Kriegsmann and the neotes scientific advisory board.