About the Center

Innovation Fund Denmark has granted EUR 3,216,166.60 to BrainStem – Stem Cell Center of Excellence in Neurology - which will do research in neurodegenerative diseases over a 6 year period - from 2015 until 2020. Now with an extension until end of 2021. The coordinator of the project is Associate Professor Kristine Freude, University of Copenhagen with the primary locations of activity being University of Copenhagen, Lund University, Danish Dementia Research Centre, Rigshospitalet University of Copenhagen, University of Southern Denmark, Aarhus University, Bioneer, Lundbeck A/S, Innovative Concepts in Drug Development.

Advanced stem cell technologies will be used to re-program skin cells from patients with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases to diseased neurons. The researchers will thus have a close look at the molecular mechanisms behind neudegenerative diseases. The hope is that these diseased cells can be used to develop better diagnostics and to test new drugs.

Partners

• The Group for stem cells models for studies of neurodegenerative diseases, University of Copenhagen (Kristine Freude)
• The Group for Stem Cells and Embryology, University of Copenhagen (Poul Hyttel)
• The Bioinformatics Group, Center for non-coding RNA in Technology and Health (RTH), University of Copenhagen (Jan Gorodkin)
• The Group for Bioethics, Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen (Peter Sandøe)
• The Danish Research Institute of Translational Neuroscience (DANDRITE), Stem Cell Group, Aarhus University (Mark Denham)
• The Group for Genome Editing and Regenerative Medicine, Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University (Yonglun Luo)
• The Group for Stem Cells and Developmental Neurobiology, University of Southern Denmark (Morten Meyer)
• The Stem Cell Laboratory for CNS disease Modelling, Wallenberg Neuroscience Center, Lund University (Laurent Roybon)
• The Experimental Dementia Research Unit, Wallenberg Neuroscience Center, Lund University (Gunnar K. Gouras)
• The Danish Dementia Research Centre (DDRC), Rigshospitalet, University of Copenhagen (Gunhild Waldemar)
• H. Lundbeck (Karina Fog)
• Bioneer A/S (Christian Clausen)
• Innovative Concepts in Drug Development (ICDD), France (Nathalie Compagnone) - Left the project in 2020

BrainStem External Collaborators

• BioTalentum Ltd (András Dinnyes)
• Aalborg Univeristy, Department of Chemistry and Bioscience  (Michael Toft Overgaard)
• University of Irvine (Mathew Blurton-Jones) 

BrainStem Steering Group

BrainStem is managed by Associate Professor, Kristine Freude and Professor Poul Hyttel is on hand as Senior Advisor. The members of the Steering Group are:

• Kristine Freude, University of Copenhagen
• Poul Hyttel, University of Copenhagen
• Jan Gorodkin, University of Copenhagen
  
• Betina Wingreen Jensen, University of Copenhagen
• Peter Sandøe, University of Copenhagen
• Jørgen E Nielsen, The Danish Dementia Research Centre (DDRC), Rigshospitalet, University of Copenhagen 
• Laurent Roybon, Lund University
• Agnete Kirkeby, Lund University
• Gunnar Gouras, Lund University
• Morten Meyer, University of Southern Denmark
• Mark Denham, Aarhus University
• Yonglun Luo, Aarhus University
• Karina Fog, H. Lundbeck
• Christian Clausen, Bioneer A/S

Two internationally recognized experts in the field serve as external members in the Steering Group:

• Jari Koistinaho, University of Eastern Finland
• Frank Edenhofer, Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg, Germany