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International collaboration to boost research into role of extracellular vesicles in metabolic changes occurring in obesity and diabetes

Australian professor Carlos Salomon will make several visits to Aalborg in the next two years to collaborate with Aalborg University Hospital and several other Danish research centres on building a network around research into extracellular vesicles (EVs). EVs are little ‘messengers’ in a newly discovered system of communication between cells and tissues. The collaboration will focus on the potential of EVs as biomarkers and a means of monitoring metabolic changes in people who are overweight or otherwise at risk of – or living with – type 2 diabetes.

Several Danish researchers have already been in touch with Salomon as a first step in building the network. Staff Physician Ulla Kampmann Opstrup PhD of the Steno Diabetes Center Aarhus visited Salomon’s labs in the summer of 2019, and Associate Professor Anja Elaine Sørensen PhD of Professor Louise Torp Dalgaard’s group at Roskilde University has also been in discussion with Carlos Salomon over the past year regarding future collaboration.

International expert in a new field

Aase Handberg, Professor of Clinical Biochemistry at Aalborg University Hospital, is looking forward to the visiting professor’s time in northern Jutland.

‘Carlos Salomon is an internationally recognized expert in the new field that EV research represents. We are seeing a paradigm shift, thanks in part to Salomon’s huge contribution. Salomon’s research team is responsible for some highly sophisticated methods, while his laboratory has been certified by the ISO (International Organization for Standardization, Ed.), which is a rarity in EV research. It is testament to the stature of the expert we will be collaborating with’, says Aase Handberg.

Dr Salomon’s visiting professorship, for which the Danish Diabetes Academy has just awarded DKK 300,000, will begin after the 2020 summer vacation. He will then be based in Aalborg for periods of at least a month, but will also work in both Roskilde and Aarhus.

‘Professor Aase Handberg’s group at Aalborg University Hospital will be a most outstanding partner. My experience in comprehensive general characterization of EV from a specific tissue will complement the phenotyping of individual EVs that is Handberg’s approach. We will use the combined technologies on blood samples from a cohort of people with obesity and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease undergoing a weight-loss intervention, and a healthy control group. I will also collaborate with other Danish research groups on the characterization  of EVs in pregnant women with obesity or gestational diabetes mellitus’, explains Carlos Salomon.

By Pernille Fløjstrup Andersen, Communications Officer, DDA

Facts

Dr Carlos Salomon BSc (Hons I), MPhil, DMedSc, PhD), University of Queensland, Australia

Has been awarded DKK 300,000 by the Danish Diabetes Academy for a visiting professorship.

Title: Extracellular vesicles in obesity and diabetes: Circulating liquid biopsies for biomarker discovery and real-time monitoring of metabolic changes in a Danish population.

Research centres in Denmark: Aalborg University Hospital, Steno Diabetes Center Aarhus, Roskilde University

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Contact Danish Diabetes Academy

Managing Director Tore Christiansen

Email: tore.christiansen@rsyd.dk

Phone: +45 2964 6764