“You have a new match!”
The “PerMed Match-Making Day” of the Personalised Medicine Research Cluster was a great success, and will likely be the beginning of many new matches between researchers. After a long pandemic-caused pause, this event attracted basic and clinical researchers from different fields for exchange.
To potentiate such current efforts at the Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology at UCPH, the PerMed Match-Making Day assembled like-minded researchers from basic and clinical research disciplines. The overall objective of this event was to establish and strengthen the network among them and to nucleate future collaborations targeted to personalised medicine-efforts.
The productive atmosphere and the informal setting initiated the networking-part of the event in a barrier-breaking manner. Based on the evaluation of the event, potential collaborations have already been initiated - creating excitement in future research activities within the PerMed Cluster.
I think it was a great success and a result of a joint effort from our personalized medicine cluster. In our evaluation, it appears that several collaborations and contacts were established. It makes me proud of our event and cluster.
Introduction by philosopher Prof. Vincent F. Henricks, followed by research presentation
As an appetizer for this networking-event, philosopher Prof. Vincent F. Henricks from the Center for Information and Bubble Studies at the University of Copenhagen refreshed the participants by an insight into various networking strategies. Among them, he inspired the scientific community to leave the conventional paths in funding and collaboration efforts.
Afterwards, group leaders among the PerMed clusters used the opportunity to present their research projects, aiming to inform the external participants about their current personalised-medicine based research.
Associate Professor Tuula Anneli Kallunki, Prof. Flemming Steen Jørgensen, Prof. Morten Andersen, Associate Professor
Charlotte Vermehren and Prof. Hans Bräuner-Osborne gave insights into a potpourri of their ongoing research activities, among them: Personalised therapy of ovarian cancer, computational prediction of drug metabolism, health-metrics assisted prediction of adverse effects, pharmacogenetic testing in primary care and molecular phenotyping of psychiatric drug targets. This session was very appealing to both, external and internal participants and provided the basis for an informal exchange throughout the day.
Professor Søren Brunak from Novo presented the Danish Disease trajectory browser
Personalised-medicine efforts can largely profit from an exhaustive and expert-guided application of bioinformatic approaches. The organizers of the PerMed Match-Making Day were thus happy to motivate Prof. Søren Brunak from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research who pioneered the bioinformatic integration of systems biological data and health registries.
He introduced the Danish Disease trajectory browser, http://dtb.cpr.ku.dk, a tool that allows the user to explore population-wide disease progression patterns from the entire Danish population (based on data from 1994 to 2018). In a clinical setting, these disease trajectory patterns may help physicians choose the best treatment option for a specific patient based on known disease trajectories and possible future complications.
After Prof. Brunak’s talk, the PerMed Match-Making Day participants were invited to continue their knowledge sharing in a scientific Speed-Dating event. This event did not only give the internal participants the chance to improve their elevator-speech skills, but also allowed external participants to learn more about PerMed research and even discuss questions which arose in the previous sessions.
Definitely, the success of the PerMed Match-Making Day 2022 will remain a fixed element in the calendar of the Personalised Medicine Research Cluster at the UCPH´s Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology.
