Projects

Current projects

Greenland Inuit Diet Intervention – The project examines the effect of following a traditional Greenland Inuit diet compared to a traditional western diet in Greenland Inuit to see whether this could be used as a potential intervention for preventing the development of type 2 diabetes, which has become alarmingly prevalent in Greenland. In this project, I’m responsible for designing and conducting the randomized control dietary intervention study in Greenland and you can read a bit more about the project here.

Vitamin B₁₂, Cognition and Metabolism – This project aims to examine the role of vitamin B₁₂ levels and its role in the developing brain. We are examining the levels of vitamin B₁₂ and related compounds to study the association between these and cognitive as well as metabolic health in infants and young children.

COUNTERSTRIKE/CALM – Stands for COUNTERacting Sarcopenia with proTeins and exeRcise – Screening the CALM cohort for lIpoprotein biomarKErs (Yes, science does not run short for awesome acronyms not at all related to the actual project). You can see a short formal description of the project at our University of Copenhagen Website https://counterstrike.ku.dk.

COUNTERSTRIKE aims to complement the CALM (Counteracting Age-Related Loss of Skeletal Muscle Mass, https://calm.ku.dk/english ) project with a full metabolomic investigation of all its 3000 samples with emphasis on determination of lipoprotein particle distribution and linking this to gut microbiota metabolomic potential and host physiological parameters. One of the most central parts of the project is to establish a rapid screening method for determination of lipoprotein particle distribution based on NMR spectroscopy.

Here I’m responsible for the old fashioned way of measuring lipoprotein particle distribution using ultracentrifugation which we use to calibrate the NMR model. This will hugely affect the number of samples that we can analyze, going from 10 per week to 100 per day.

Former projects

The Gut, Grains and Greens center (3G) – The project examines the interplay between the human host genome expression, gut microbiota, and diet. We tested interventions targeting the microbiome and mucosa and proposed that these by doing so one can reduce the risk of developing metabolic dysfunctions such as obesity, Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) and cardiovascular diseases (CVD). http://www.3g-center.dk.

The Governing Obesity (GO) project was set up to provide novel means for governing obesity and its consequences via effective interventions at the societal and individual level. Governing Obesity was one of the research initiatives established in 2013 as part of the University of Copenhagen Excellence Programme for Interdisciplinary Research (2016). I was part of work package 2 on early life interventions for preventing and treatment of obesity. https://go.ku.dk and https://go.ku.dk/research/wp2_early_life_interventions .