Denmark to host new protein research centre
Denmark is to build a new centre for protein research at the University of Copenhagen. The university believes that the new centre will make the capital city 'a global hotbed for health science research'. The centre will be built with a DKK 600 million (around €13.4 million) from the Novo Nordisk Foundation. This is the largest donation ever made to basic research in Denmark. When the centre opens in 2008 it will house leading Danish and international protein researchers and experts who will use 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 at the University of Copenhagen. Proteins control the body's daily functions, and build cells, tissues and organs. They also produce hormones, enzymes, transport molecules, antibodies and neurotransmitters. It is estimated that we each have more than one million different proteins in our bodies, each with their own function. Even minor changes to a protein can lead to disease: in the hormone system, the brain, metabolism, the digestive tract and the vascular system. 'Recent years' mapping of the human DNA is a fantastic achievement, but its practical value is still quite limited. We can read the individual letters in the genetic code, but we don't understand what the words mean. That's why we need to learn much more about the proteins which the genes code for,' says Gert Almind, CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
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