The largest donation to Danish research gives new hope of being able to provide much more targeted and effective treatment of many diseases, including cancer, diabetes, dementia and overweight, in the future.
With a donation of 600 million kroner from the Novo Nordisk Foundation it will be possible to build a new center for protein research at the University of Copenhagen, making Denmarks capital a global hotbed for health science research. The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research will be located in the Panum building at the Faculty of Health Sciences. After its opening in 2008, it will house leading Danish and international protein researchers and experts who will use the most advanced laboratory facilities to study human proteins and their significance for health and disease.
"Thanks to this exceptional donation, we can boost research into what proteins look like and how they behave and interact in cells and tissues in healthy and sick people. This insight will provide entirely new opportunities to discover and develop new medicines. By mapping the structure and function of proteins in the healthy human body, we can gain a much better understanding of what goes wrong when you get a disorder and how diseases can be treated more effectively, for instance with tailored proteins as drugs," explains professor Ulla Wewer, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, who will receive the grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation on Monday, 30 April at 12.30 p.m.
"The Center will house five strong research teams with leaders from the top of the international scene, and the researchers will have access to an advanced equipment park. This creates unique conditions for conducting world-class research while strengthening our degree programmes at the same time," says professor Wewer.
The human body works with the help of an enormous number of proteins that control the bodys daily functions. Proteins build cells, tissues and or
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Contact: Dean Ulla Wewer
sunddekan@adm.ku.dk
452-875-7051
University of Copenhagen
30-Apr-2007