Science

I am currently at University of Copenhagen where I am post-doccing with Dr Kenneth Lindegaard Madsen. In the Madsen group they have developed a small peptide that via PICK1 inhibition reliefs neuropathic pain in mice. Based on PICK1’s function it was expected that the effect was due to central mechanisms, but several lines of evidence have shown that there is also a peripheral effect. This is where I come in to the picture. My current project is about understanding this peripheral effect. In my project I focus on the immune system which plays an important part in pain and the peripheral nerves themselves. I have made a small poster about the project. Check it out here .

Before moving to Copenhagen I worked as a postdoc at King’s College London with Dr Franziska Denk and previously the late Prof Stephen McMahon. This was made possible when I secured a grant from The Lundbeck Foundation after I handed in my PhD. Actually, the deadline for my PhD and the grant was in the same week! Luckily, my PhD was approved, and I secured the funding for my stay in London.

In London I looked at satellite glial cells with in vivo Ca2+ imaging and flow cytometry. Or at least that was the plan. Due to COVID-19 it has been difficult to secure scientific progress on my lab-based projects. Instead I made a meta-analysis of single cell RNAseq data from dorsal root ganglia to investigate satellite glial cells and their response to different types of nerve injury. The meta-analysis ended up including two new single cell RNAseq datasets and taught me a lot about the limitations of the sequencing technique and analysis. You can read the paper here and a summary on twitter here.

Despite of COVID-19 I was able to secure enough in vivo Ca2+ imaging data from the satellite glial cells. I only just managed to collect the last data before my fellowship ended in London and I just finished writing up the manuscript as a preprint. You can read the preprint here and a summary on twitter here. I am very grateful that my PI in Copenhagen has given me the opportunity to finish this project in a prober way and also very grateful for Dr. Franziska Denk’s continuous support.

Before coming to London, I obtained my bachelor and master’s degree in Molecular Medicine at Aarhus University in Denmark. After a 30-day break I started my PhD at associate Professor Christian B. Vaegter’s lab where I also investigated satellite glial cells.