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Biomedicine provides three new Lundbeck Foundation Fellows

For the very first time, three researchers from one department can call themselves Lundbeck Foundation Fellows and, backed by DKK 10 million, they can dedicate the next five years to biomedical research.

2017.11.09 | Helle Horskjær Hansen

Martin Roelsgaard Jakobsen, associate professor, PhD, Department of Biomedicine.

Rasmus Otkjær Bak, Assistant Professor, PhD, Department of Biomedicine and Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University

Søren Degn, Assistant Professor, PhD, Department of Biomedicine.

They are among the most promising health science researchers of their generation. Each of their research projects has the potential to revolutionise their field, and they can now add Lundbeck Foundation Fellow to their resumes. With the award follows a research scholarship worth DKK 10 million.

The Lundbeck Foundation has appointed a total of five young, well-established researchers to their fellowships – and three of them are from the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University:

Martin Roelsgaard Jakobsen, associate professor, PhD, Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University

Martin Roelsgaard Jakobsen will study how we can better exploit the innate immune system to fight against cancer. Among other things, he will study the STING protein more closely, which acts as a kind of warning bell for our immune system.

When the STING protein is activated, it sends signals to the nucleus of the cells and warns them of danger. This triggers a response from our immune cells to fight the danger that is present. If the STING protein can be manipulated to increase its activity, then it may be possible not only to stop the cancer, but also to prompt the patient's own immune system to remove it completely.

Rasmus Otkjær Bak, Assistant Professor, PhD, Department of Biomedicine and Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University

Rasmus Otkjær Bak will use CRISPR technology to edit genomes in the stem cells of the blood and in this way remove genetic mutations and cure several serious blood disorders.

He will initially attempt to create a new tool for improving the effectivity of the genome editing of the blood’s stem cells, so that there are an increased number of corrected stem cells to transplant back into the patients.

His secondary goal is to find a method to correct the genomes in the blood’s stem cells directly in the patient. 

Søren Degn, Assistant Professor, PhD, Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University

Søren Degn will investigate whether we can add a new form of inheritance to our list of how we are coded and affected from conception. He has discovered signs that we are able to inherit paragenetically – i.e. that during the foetal stage, our immune system learns a range of mechanisms from our mother’s immune system.

This is particularly significant for children whose mothers suffer from an autoimmune disease. The children do not always inherit the disease itself, but their immune system still has some of the same errors as the mother's.

Contact

Martin Roelsgaard Jakobsen
Aarhus University, Department of Biomedicine
Tel.: (+45) 8716 7846
mrj@biomed.au.dk

Rasmus O. Bak
Aarhus University, Department of Biomedicine and Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS)
Mobile: (+45) 9392 9100
bak@aias.au.dk

Søren Degn
Aarhus University, Department of Biomedicine
Mobile: (+45) 2214 1703
sdegn@biomed.au.dk 

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