Three dedicated AU researchers will now be able to start their own research groups thanks to DKK 10m grants from the Lundbeck Foundation.

2020.06.24 | Ida Hammerich Nielson

From the left: Bjarni Vilhjalmson (Aarhus BSS), David Olagnier (Health) og Joseph Lyons (Nat).

This is the fourteenth round of fellowships from the Lundbeck Foundation, and once again the grants have been awarded to outstanding early career researchers. The grants will enable them to establish their own research groups. Nine researchers received fellowships, three of them from Aarhus University:

Bjarni Vilhjalmsson, Aarhus University, National Centre for Register-based Research
The iPSYCH database is a unique treasure chest of knowledge: it contains anonymised health, social and DNA data on 130,000 Danish citizens born in the period 1980-2005. Over the next five years, Vilhjalmsson will work on developing new tools to analyse this enormous dataset in order to produce new knowledge about psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia and depression.

Read a portrait of Bjarni Vilhjalmsson on the Lundbeck Foundation website (in Danish)

David Olagnier, Aarhus University, Department of Biomedicine

Many strains of cancer cells are extremely resistant to chemotherapy and radiation therapy. But a new therapeutic approach is under development. This treatment uses a genetically modified virus – what’s known as an oncolytic virus – to attack cancer cells: like a precision strike missile, it penetrates and destroys the cancer cell without damaging healthy tissue. With a focus on prostate cancer and lung cancer, Olagnier will conduct research into oncolytic virus therapy over the next five years.

Read a portrait of David Olagnier on the Lundbeck Foundation website (in Danish)

 Joseph Lyons, Aarhus University, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics

Lipid transport in the body’s cells is central to a wide range of fundamental biological processes, such as the blood’s ability to coagulate. Imbalances in the lipid molecules in cell membranes can cause disease; for example, in patients with neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, where we see an accumulation of abnormal proteins in the brain in clusters called plaques. Lyons will use cryo-electron microscopes to study how the transport of lipids across the cell membrane function down to the atomic level.

Read a portrait of Joseph Lyons on the Lundbeck Foundation website (in Danish)