Meet the oLIVER team
Liver biopsies are invasive and potentially dangerous procedures required for a reliable diagnosis of the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease – NAFLD. The oLIVER team will combine their expertise from academia, industry, and the clinic to establish a new method for diagnosing NAFLD. Using an entirely new approach known as APTA-SHAPE, the oLIVER team aims to identify biomarkers that will make it possible to diagnose NAFLD directly from patient blood samples. You can read more about the project’s team members below:
JØRGEN KJEMS – iNANO, AU
Professor at the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience center (iNANO) and Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Aarhus University. The Kjems lab specialises in nucleic acid technology and nanomedicine and they have developed the APTA-SHAPE technique that will be used to identify new biomarkers for liver disease in the oLIVER project.
DANIEL M. DUPONT – iNANO, AU
Assistant professor in the Kjems lab. Daniel has more than 10 years' experience working with RNA aptamers and is one of the inventors of the APTA-SHAPE technique. He is responsible for the wet-lab analysis of oLIVER samples at AU.
SØREN FJELSTRUP – iNANO, AU
Postdoc in the Kjems lab. Søren has a background in nanoscience and has developed the bioinformatics platform used to run APTA-SHAPE. He will be responsible for data analysis and biomarker identification at AU.
HENNING GRØNBÆK – Aarhus University Hospital
Professor at the Department of Hepatology & Gastroenterology at Aarhus University Hospital. The Grønbæk team has a long-standing interest in Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) and has established a biobank of blood samples from both patients and animal models undergoing treatment schemes that ameliorate the disease. The analysis of these samples will form the basis for the identification of new biomarkers for liver disease as well as treatment response.
MIKKEL BREINHOLT KJÆR – Aarhus University Hospital
PhD student at the Department of Hepatology & Gastroenterology at Aarhus University Hospital. Mikkel will collect patient samples and manage the analysis associated with treatment schemes. He will also work with an established mouse model for NAFLD to increase the size of the data set and allow translational studies.
CHRISTIAN BJERGGAARD VÆGTER – Dept. of Biomedicine, AU
Associate professor at the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University. His team will provide a mouse model for diabetic neuropathy and the respective controls.
NATASHA BARASCUK MICHAELSEN –Novo Nordisk A/S
Principal scientist, Translational Sciences at Novo Nordisk. Natasha and her team work with translational strategies, and are responsible for biomarker implementation from pre-clinical to clinical setting during the drug development cycle, primarily within the field of cardiometabolic diseases.
Click here toread more about the five projects funded in ODIN's first call round.