Diego Balboa

Diabetes is an alarming global health problem that requires innovative therapeutic solutions. Current treatments fall short, as they do not resolve the primary disease mechanisms behind impaired insulin secretion. Recent advances in stem cell technology make possible the generation of insulin-secreting cells in the lab. However, these stem cell-derived cells are immature due to our limited understanding of how they fully develop naturally. The aim of this project is to gain insights into the mechanisms that orchestrate islet cell maturation by combining data generated with state-of-the-art technologies, including stem cell models, single-cell analytics and editing of the genetic code. This novel information will help us to test how to improve the generation of stem cell-derived insulin-secreting cells for therapy and disease modeling, translating into better diagnostic and treatment tools for diabetes.

Niels Banhos Danneskiold-Samsøe

Peptide hormones are small strings of amino acids that are crucial for regulating our metabolism. Drugs derived from peptide hormones are used in the treatment of metabolic disorders including obesity and diabetes. Peptide hormones are cleaved from larger precursor proteins at specific amino acids. Using this knowledge uncovered a novel peptide hormone. The project aims to determine what regulates the release of this peptide hormone, which cells that produces it, and what role it plays in metabolism.

Given the importance of peptide hormones in health and disease, genetic mutations affecting peptide hormones are often harmful. The project utilizes an algorithm based on prediction of how likely a potential peptide is to cause harm, and where peptides are cleaved in proteins, to identify potential novel hormones and explore their effects on metabolism.

Pim Van Den Hoven

Pim Van Den Hoven says: “Patients with diabetes are at risk of developing a wound on their foot called a diabetic foot ulcer (DFU). Up to one in every three patients with diabetes will develop a DFU in their lifetime. Despite treatment, the DFU will not heal in up to thirty percent, leading to a high risk of amputation. One of the main reasons a DFU does not heal is decreased perfusion to the foot. Currently, the medical field lacks a tool to measure this foot perfusion in a reliable way. To improve outcome in DFU diagnosis and treatment, there is urgent need for a better way to assess this perfusion. The PODO-MAP project examines three potential imaging techniques to fill this gap: advanced duplex ultrasound, contrast enhanced ultrasound and near-infrared fluorescence imaging with indocyanine green. Also, a clinical registry is performed for patients with a DFU to gain insight in the clinical. By doing this, we aim to improve outcome by increasing the healing rate and reduce the amount of leg amputations.”

Pim Van Den Hoven has a longstanding interest in vascular surgery and is currently doing his specialist training at Department of Vascular Surgery, Rigshospitalet, and Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands. He further says: “The Clinical Emerging Investigator Fellowship from the Novo Nordisk Foundation will be instrumental in establishing myself as research leader within the field of near-infrared fluorescence imaging”.

Inger Lise Gade

Inger Lise Gade says: “The air we exhale is a highly accessible yet unexploited biological sample that can be collected non-invasively. This project aims to revolutionize disease diagnosis and monitoring by harnessing the untapped potential of exhaled breath analysis. Using pulmonary embolism and stroke as examples, this project ultimately seeks to shift the diagnostic paradigm towards non-invasive, point-of-care analysis based on exhaled breath to start already in the pre-hospital setting. The project will for the first time combine proteomic and metabolomic analysis of exhaled breath to advance the understanding of the acute cellular and biological mechanisms in pulmonary embolism and stroke, respectively, thereby aiding identification and validation of novel exhaled biomarkers suitable for point-of-care testing. The specific activities in the project encompass a literature review study on proteomic and metabolomic analysis to establish a protocol for exhaled breath sample collection and omics-analysis. The protocol will be tested in a methodological study before application in subsequent pre-clinical and clinical studies of stroke and pulmonary embolism. Reproducible porcine model of hemorrhagic and ischemic stroke variants will be developed. A paired porcine study of stoke will provide optimal conditions for identification of exhaled biomarkers able to discriminate the different types of strokes. Clinical studies of exhaled biomarkers for pulmonary embolism and stroke will validate the identified putative new, exhaled biomarkers and be the cornerstone for futures new, non-invasive exhaled breath tests.”

Inger Lise Gade has a longstanding interest in looking for biomarkers in exhaled breath and is currently doing her specialist training in Internal Medicine at the Department of Hematology, Aalborg University Hospital. She says: “The Clinical Emerging Investigator grant will permit me to combine my clinical and research training and allow me to establish my own research group and take a unique international first-mover position in the cutting-edge research field of exhaled breath.”

Kristian Kragholm

Kristian Kragholm says: “The electrocardiogram (ECG), a low-cost and readily available test of the heart’s electrical system, holds promise to improve detection of critical conditions in the prehospital setting to improve outcomes. We propose a shift to a broader inclusion of ECG abnormalities, symptoms, and vital signs including blood pressure, blood oxygen levels, heart and breathing rates, to indicate a significant blood clot in the heart’s artery system that requires balloon stenting. A similar approach will be used to examine pulmonary artery clots, aortic dissection (an acute tear in the wall of the major artery, the aorta), and acute heart failure. Finally, we propose to use ECG information to predict cardiac arrest. The outlined projects build on a nationwide Danish ECG cohort and linkage to national registries, with potentials for guiding future artificial intelligence applications that can aid clinicians in early detection of the critical, life-threatening conditions to improve patient outcome.”

Kristian Kragholm is currently doing his specialist training in Cardiology at the Departments of Cardiology at North Denmark Regional Hospital, Hjørring, and Aalborg University Hospital. He has been Associate Professor at Department of Clinical Medicine, Aalborg University, since 2022. Kristian Kragholm further states: “This funding will consolidate me as an independent research leader and allow me to continue doing research that I believe will have a huge impact on care and outcomes of patients with acute cardiovascular conditions in the pre- and in-hospital setting and will consolidate me as an independent research leader.”

Jakob Werner Hansen

Jakob Werner Hansen says: “VEXAS is a newly discovered disease first described in December 2020. It is caused by an acquired mutation in the UBA1 gene in the hematopoietic stem cells. The mutation is found on the X-chromosome, so it is primarily elderly male individuals which are diagnosed with the disease. The syndrome is characterized by autoimmune symptoms, such as fever, skin rash and cytopenia which are debilitating for the patients and affecting both quality of life and affects overall survival. This proposal outlines our plan to conduct a clinical trial in the Nordic countries using the promising drug (azacitidine), which is not currently approved for the treatment of these patients. Furthermore, we will investigate the cells from the blood and bone marrow to get a better understanding of the disease, this combined effort will possibly both improve outcomes for patients and strengthen our knowledge about the molecular biology underlying the disease.”.

Jakob Werner Hansen is currently doing his specialist training at the Department of Hematology, Rigshospitalet. He says further: “The Clinical Emerging Investigator fellowship will allow me to build my own research group with focused on the VEXAS syndrome and continue my work as combined clinician and researcher”.

Helene Charlotte Wiese Rytgaard

Helene Charlotte Wiese Rytgaard says: “One of the key challenges in medical research consists in analyzing the effects of treatments administered over time using real-world data. Here traditional statistical methods and standalone machine learning approaches may either be inapplicable or fail to yield clinically meaningful results. The obstacles that a sound statistical approach needs to deal with are continuous-time dynamics, including irregular monitoring, and complex treatment decisions, changes of patient characteristics, and health outcomes. This research project aims to develop, extend and implement advanced statistical methods integrating machine learning techniques for analyzing treatment effects in observational healthcare data, to provide more reliable tools for informed medical decision-making by patients, clinicians, and drug developers. The project will expand and enhance modern statistical causal inference tools combined with machine learning techniques and continuous-time models, to data-adaptively model the dependence between life-course events and treatment decisions, while accurately and efficiently addressing essential medical questions regarding dynamic administering of treatment. The goal is to provide a toolbox containing methods and corresponding software implementations that can be used to gain valuable insights into how the administration of treatments over time impacts patient survival and disease progression, beyond what is possible with existing methods.”

David Duchene Garzon

David Duchene Garzon says: “Identifying infected animals as early as possible allows us to minimize the spread of a pathogen and even prevent a pandemic. At the moment, we can only make sure that an
animal is infected by costly laboratory analysis. This is problematic for livestock and wildlife given the limited funds that can be spent on each animal, yet these settings are the most common source of dangerous pathogens to humans. Surprisingly, video data is not yet being used for identifying infected animals, despite great strides in video analysis in recent years.

This project will cover this gap and improve our ability to halt epidemics in their tracks. A broad range of animals will be filmed, and their behavior will be compared with their blood tests. Whether infected or not, each recording will help train computers, which will inform us about how pathogens can drive behaviour. A free app will then be developed for companies, governments, and lay people to detect infected animals at a minimal cost.”

Mathias Spliid Heltberg

Mathias Spliid Heltberg says: “Modern data analysis has transformed how we study life’s complexities. My proposal merges different ways to study the complex machinery of living cells, and by developing new algorithms and applying advanced methods to analyze the data, I aim to obtain new levels of details of the physical mechanisms in the cell.

When we look into the center of a cell, we see proteins gathered in small droplets and showing waves in their concentration profile. To understand how this can emerge, we are using new tools to analyze data and develop new ways to obtain more information from the experiments. With this, the hope is to reveal how droplets and oscillations interact and understand how this can impact cellular function. Last year, I discovered that DNA repair is guided by formation of droplets and oscillations in the concentration of proteins, and with new data analysis I hope to advance this hypothesis. Put in simple terms, my group will use data analysis to solve a puzzle: how cells orchestrate resources in space and time to complete fundamental tasks.”

Josefine Bohr Brask

Josefine Bohr Brask says: “Social networks describe the pattern of social connections between individuals in a population. For example, the friendships among children in a school class, the grouping patterns within a dolphin population, and the grooming interactions within a group of chimpanzees, can all be described as a social network, where each node is an individual and the links are their social connections.

Social networks play an important role in the lives of both humans and non-human animals. The structure of the networks affect the spread of disease and information, and the social connectedness of individuals affect their health, well-being and survival. Social networks are therefore of great scientific interest.

A key question about social networks is how the complex structures arise from the behavioural strategies that individuals use to select their social partners. Answering this question is essential for understanding social systems, and for predicting their reaction to future societal and environmental challenges.

In this project, we develop and use new computational methods for the study of networks, within two main methodological regimes: statistical analysis of network data, and simulation of networks via computer algorithms (generative network modelling). Our aim with this is to advance the study of networks and our understanding of the emergence of social network structures.”