Associate Professor Martin Roelsgaard Jakobsen from the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University receives the Anders Jahre Young Scientist Prize. The prize is awarded by the University of Oslo and is regarded as one of the most prestigious research prizes.

2018.08.17 | Simon Byrial Fischel

Associate Professor Martin Roelsgaard from the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University receives the prestigious Anders Jahre Young Scientist Prize. Photo: Martin Gravgaard

Researcher from Aarhus honoured with the ‘little Nobel Prize’ for medical research

Associate Professor Martin Roelsgaard Jakobsen from the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University receives the Anders Jahre Young Scientist Prize. The prize is awarded by the University of Oslo and is regarded as one of the most prestigious research prizes.

When Associate Professor and PhD Martin Roelsgaard Jakobsen receives the Anders Jahre Young Scientist Prize in October, it will not be as a reward for one particular research project, but rather to honour his already impressive contribution to biomedical basic research.

Nevertheless, one particular area of Martin Roelsgaard Jakobsen's research has enjoyed considerable attention lately; He is a member of the research team that last year published a groundbreaking discovery in Nature Communications that sheds new light on how parts of our immune system are controlled during e.g. viral infections, autoimmune diseases and cancer.

"We discovered that a protein called IFI16 which is carried in the majority of our immune cells is of vital importance for these cell’s defence," he explains.

"The signal path in the immune system that we looked at – which tells the cells that are being attacked that they should form defence agents – is controlled by a protein called STING. Our work showed that IFI16 actually gets involved and regulates the function of the STING signal path, and thus how this part of the immune system is activated."

New perspectives for immune therapy
Martin Roelsgaard Jakobsen's group are now in the process of developing medical treatments that can utilise this new insight and make it possible to regulate the body's immune response – both up and down. Cancer treatment is a particular area where there has been a lot of focus on immunotherapy as a gentler way of fighting cancer in recent years.

"We hope to be able to develop drugs that give the patient’s own immune system extra ammunition, so that the body itself can, for example, fight developing tumours in a much more efficient way," explains Martin Roelsgaard Jakobsen.

"On the other hand, people who suffer from autoimmune diseases such as Sjogren's syndrome, lupus and psoriasis, may be able to benefit from a drug that slows the signal and thereby reduces the immune response that leads to the disease."

Prestigious prize
The Anders Jahre Award has been given out by the University of Oslo since 1960 and honours outstanding clinical research and basic research. Together with the main prize of DKK 1,000,000, the Anders Jahre Young Scientist Prize of DKK 400,000 is known as the ‘little Nobel Prize’.

"It's a great honour to receive this award. It’s both a recognition of me as a researcher and of the work my team and I have done over the past years. For me, it’s confirmation that I should continue in the same direction and it gives me the energy to work even harder," says Martin Roelsgaard Jakobsen, who shares the prize with PhD Espen Melum from the Norwegian PSC Research Center.

"I hope that the award helps to underline the importance of the research we do, because we depend on others believing in us and supporting us," says Martin Roelsgaard Jakobsen, whose research has so far been made possible by major grants from, among others, the Danish Council for Independent Research, the Lundbeck Foundation and the Danish Cancer Society. 

Contact
Associate Professor, PhD Martin Roelsgaard Jakobsen
Aarhus University, Department of Biomedicine
Tel.: (+45) 8716 7846 / (+45) 2615 3369
mrj@biomed.au.dk