Faculty
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BioInnovation Institute Faculty
BioInnovation Institute has entered collaborations with leading universities to create a unique interdisciplinary environment focused on commercialization that can foster novel ideas and lead to new spin-outs.
Selected university projects have established a team that will work in BII’s office and lab space for a duration of three years alongside start-ups in BII’s programs. Each Faculty project is granted DKK 6M per year.
BII will continuously source projects and besides fostering new companies, an expected outcome is interdisciplinary collaborations and cross-fertilizations of methods and tools between the projects in all BII programs.
Read more about the projects in BII’s Faculty below and our article Fertilizing investment grounds with top tier researchers.
Projects
Designed bacterial collaboromes for biocontrol of plant pathogens
Professor Karsten Kristiansen is designing consortia of bacteria – termed collaboromes – able to prevent or diminish attacks by pathogens causing major annual losses of crops. The project will establish a comprehensive catalog of genes, species, and collaboromes characterizing the microbiota in fields with high or low incidence of diseases due to fungal or bacterial pathogens.
Microbial cell therapies for modulating the gut-brain axis
The gut-brain axis is established with important roles in several debilitating diseases, including depression, anxiety and Parkinson disease. However, limited therapeutic options are available to modulate the gut-brain axis. We are making microbial cell therapies producing the neuroactive compounds in situ of the gut to treat diseases of the central nervous system.
Microbial production of therapeutic alkaloids
Monoterpenoid indole alkaloids (MIAs) are plant-derived natural products with remarkable structural diversity and a myriad of applications as therapeutics, nutraceuticals, pest control agents, and materials precursors. The project focuses on three things; developing a robust microbial platform for production of any desired MIA, determining the target MIAs that an eventual company will commercialize, and constructing separate yeast hosts that will produce these molecules at high titers, rates and yields.
Locally Sustained Gene Therapy
Thomas Andresen’s project will use the team’s expertise in image-guided local injections, biomaterials and gene delivery, to create systems that can induce local cell transfection, and use the cells as therapeutic factories to reprogram local tissue microenvironments. Such reprogramming of local tissues has highly impactful treatment possibilities in cancer, autoimmune, and infectious disease.
Early diagnosis of pregnancy loss
Professor Henriette Svarre Nielsen aims to increase live birth rates by developing a comprehensive diagnostic test that can inform couples after a pregnancy loss.
Therapeutic drug monitoring
Professor Anja Boisen is developing a miniaturized tabletop device that can perform therapeutic drug monitoring on a single drop of blood in a matter of minutes. The research group will be working on a solution available at point of care without the need for specialized personnel and at a fraction of the currently available cost.