Joseph Rogers

Joseph Rogers says: “Proteins are the main molecules in biology, and they are more complicated than we thought. Some will ‘fold’ to a specific three-dimensional structure, whereas others refuse to fold and stay ‘disordered’. Disordered proteins are important to human biology and can act by binding other biomolecules. Interestingly, some disordered proteins will acquire structure when they bind, whereas others do not. We do not understand how this diverse protein behaviour arises from the DNA encoded sequence of amino acids. I will unpack this relationship using a new technique, where thousands of mutants, small changes to amino acid sequence, can be examined in a single experiment. The diversity of protein activities presents another problem – how can we control these processes, understand their importance in the cell and develop novel therapeutics? I will show that a new breed of drug-like compounds – cyclic peptides – have great potential to influence these new-found protein behaviours.”

Joseph Rogers will relocate from Boston, United States, where he has been working for Vertex Pharmaceuticals to set up his independent research group at University of Copenhagen in the beginning of 2020.

Rune Busk Damgaard

Rune Busk Damgaard says: ‘‘Inflammation is the immune system’s normal response to infection or tissue damage. However, defects in the immune system or diseases that causes chronic inflammation can lead to development of cancer. Cancer cells are characterised by their ability to grow uninhibited. Astonishingly, although 15-20 % of cancers are caused by persistent inflammation, we understand very little about the cellular processes during inflammation that fuel cell growth and cancer development. During my postdoctoral work, I discovered that certain molecular signals used by the immune system to initiate inflammation also have the ability to control cellular metabolism, which determines if cells grow and divide. The research that I will undertake aims at exploring and understanding how the cellular processes that regulate inflammation connect with and control the cellular metabolism and growth signals that cancer cells need to form tumours. This connection may be key to understanding how persistent inflammation causes cancer, and this research could help identify the mechanisms of inflammation-associated cancer development new strategies for treating these cancers.”

Rune Busk Damgaard will relocate from his postdoctoral fellowship at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, United Kingdom, to set up his independent research group at the Department of Biotechnology and Biomedicine, DTU in the spring of 2020.

Ina Maria Schiessl

Ina Maria Schiessl says: “Diabetes mellitus involves major functional complications of the kidney, which render this disease to the number one cause of end-stage kidney failure. One reason for this, are strong structural changes of the cells which built up the kidney blood vessels. This includes their migration away from the vessels, which leads to scarring of the kidney and destabilizing vessels, both decreasing kidney function. However, this mechanism is incompletely understood, because of the lack of techniques to track such structural and functional changes. In this project, I will use a novel microscopy-based technique, which I have developed in my previous work that allows us to study kidney structure and function simultaneously and over time in the same living animal. Hence, now we can visualize how those cells move away from the vessels, better understand why they do this and what functional consequences this has. Finally, we will test if this can be blocked by a new and promising anti-diabetic drug, which is already used in patients.”

Ina Maria Schiessl will relocate from her postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Physiology and Neuroscience at University of Southern California, United States, to set up her independent research group at Aarhus University in the fall of 2019.

Diego Vidaurre

Diego Vidaurre says: “No two brains respond equally to stimuli. The key idea of this project is that having an individualised picture of how the brain reacts to and processes information will enable a better understanding of each person’s unique psychology or pathology. For example, if we see someone’s face, multiple processes are initiated in the brain to manage the stimulus’ different elements: facial features, person’s identity, expression, elicited emotions, etc. If a wasp then stings us, competing neural processes emerge as our attention is rapidly directed to the pain. I refer to these different processes as neural threads. I will develop new computational models to disambiguate these threads in order to (i) better understand the principles of information processing in the brain, and (ii) characterise how this processing is unique to each person and relates to specific traits. I will apply this to the study of pain-processing to identify abnormalities in various prevalent chronic pain conditions.”

Diego Vidaurre will relocate from his postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Phychiatry at University of Oxford, United Kingdom, to set up his independent research group at Aarhus University in the beginning of 2020.

Nicholas Taylor

Nicholas Taylor says, “Certain bacteria secrete large protein machines that can specifically bind to eukaryotic cells and inject toxins inside of these cells. However, it is not known how these contractile injection systems are triggered and how they are able to transfer toxins across biological membranes. The great potential of these systems lies in their adaptation for targeted therapy: if one could change their specificity and the toxin protein they inject, it would in theory be possible to target, for example, only cancer cells, injecting a toxin that is known to be active in those cells. We will therefore try to understand these systems better at the fundamental biological level, using a combination of structural (cryoelectron microscopy), cell and molecular biology techniques. Further, we will take the first steps towards modifying these injection systems to inject cherry-picked effectors into cells of choice.”

Peter Refsing Andersen

Peter Refsing Andersen says: “Genetic parasites, such as viruses and transposons, have colonized the genome of virtually all life forms. The battle between host genomes and genetic parasites creates an evolutionary arms race – a state of rapid innovation of gene regulation mechanisms. We will study this arms race innovation to identify mechanisms that bend and bypass the standard rules of gene regulation to better understand how genes regulate and how genomes fight back against genetic parasites.”

Morten Salling Olesen

Morten Salling Olesen says: “Atrial fibrillation is the most common form of irregular heart rhythm. The disease is associated with a rapid heart rate and an increased risk of stroke. Little is known about the biological mechanisms underlying the disease. We have identified atrial fibrillation patients with substantial genetic predisposition. We will study these patients by DNA sequencing to identify the genes involved in disease development. These genes will be investigated in zebrafish models to improve molecular understanding of how variation in these genes gives rise to disease.”

Agnete Kirkeby

Agnete Kirkeby says: “Our research aims to produce pure cultures of subtype-specific nerve cells to be used as regenerative cell therapies towards neurodegenerative and neurological disorders. For this project, we have developed an advanced 3D stem cell model of the early embryonic human brain. This allows us to study the detailed cellular processes that control human brain complexity during fetal development. Using the latest techniques, we will examine each individual nerve cell in our stem cell model down to the smallest detail. We will thereby produce a map of how the hundreds of different specialized nerve cells in our brains are formed at the fetal stage. We will also develop new tools to identify and purify specific subtypes of nerve cells at different stages for transplantation therapies.”