Jonas Nørskov Søndergaard, Danish, theme Cancer development and immune defence.
I wanted to be an inventor, and figure out how to build a time machine. I got the inspiration from the Back to the Future movies.
I have an M.Sc. in Biotechnological Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark. However, my actual master's thesis project I conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), carrying out pre-clinical and molecular cancer studies on a drug that today is known as Vemurafenib. Subsequently, I conducted a Ph.D. at the Technical University of Denmark, focusing on dendritic cell immunobiology in connection with HIV-1 and M. tuberculosis infections, and trying to figure out how these infections may exploit dendritic cells to become latent infections.
2,5 years ago I started as a postdoc in the Department of Tumor Immunology in the Adema lab. We are studying a protein (DC-SCRIPT) exclusively expressed by dendritic cells in the immune system, and by normal breast epithelial cells before transforming into breast cancer cells. DC-SCRIPT has been shown to be a promising target for preventing cancer progression and for generating potent immune-stimulatory dendritic cells. However, since DC-SCRIPT gene therapy is not allowed, we are currently focusing on figuring out which pathways it affects in order the find new druggable targets. It is therefore my goal, to understanding the molecular mechanism of DC-SCRIPT, so we can use this information to improve dendritic cell based immunotherapy and/or directly treat cancer patients to avoid cancer progression.
This is an awesome motto. Most likely understanding the molecular mechanisms of disease will be the only way we can cure diseases such as cancer and AIDS.
That someday my research might be able to help a lot of people with incurable diseases.
I have always been interested in finding a way to engineer the immune system in order to cure incurable diseases. My dream is that I one day will succeed.
A: Like other short people, I am secretly planning to take over the world.
C: After I broke my arm in a snowboard accident I learned to pipette with my feet.
Yes, I have six fingers, but my mom cut off the sixth finger five minute after I was born, now I only have a small dot, it is not freaky as you thought!