Lundbeck Professorships for two IKM scientists

Kamilla Miskowiak aims with her project “ASCEND – Advancing Solutions for Cognitive Enhancement across Neuropsychiatric and Somatic Diseases” to identify the underlying causes of cognitive difficulties, so that in the future it will be possible to better understand, prevent, and treat cognitive challenges across psychiatric and somatic disorders. 

“We believe there are some shared biological abnormalities among people with cognitive difficulties, both in those with psychiatric and somatic diseases. In the future, we hope to be able to tailor treatment to the individual based on a brief cognitive screening and a blood test”, says Professor Kamilla Miskowiak.

Kamilla is a Clinical Professor at the Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Copenhagen, and at the Psychiatric Centre Copenhagen, The Capital Region of Denmark.

Abigail Mackey will, in her project “Exercise to maintain and repair the ageing motoneurone-muscle axis”, conduct a series of experiments on humans and transgenic mice to uncover the molecular mechanisms behind the neuromuscular junction and explore how it can be repaired through exercise. The ultimate goal is to develop treatments that can protect the neuromuscular junction, which weakens with age as motor neurons die, leading to irreversible loss of muscle fibres.

“I don’t think we will ever develop a drug that can replace exercise, because exercise has many different effects on the body. But there may be situations where exercise is not possible - for example, after surgery - and in those cases, it would be a great advantage if we could protect the neuromuscular junction by mimicking some of the effects of exercise,” says Professor Abigail Mackey.

Abigail is a Clinical Professor at the Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Copenhagen, and at the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Bispebjerg Hospital.

Read more:

Denmark’s leading neuroscientists receive DKK 140 million for groundbreaking research (Lundbeck Foundation's webpage)

LF Professorships (Lundbeck Foundation's webpage)

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