ATLAS has opened

In April 2017, Susanne Mandrup received a grant of DKK 65 million from the Danish National Research Foundation to establish a Centre of Excellence. The Centre officially opened on Monday 6 November with a symposium held in auditorium O100 at SDU.

By Trine Søndergaard, trinesh@sdu.dk

Professor Susanne Mandrup, Chair, Board of the Danish National Research Foundation, Liselotte Højgaard, Vice Chancellor Henrik Dam, Dean Martin Zachariasen and Dean Ole Skøtt were among those giving speeches to a capacity audience in auditorium O100 on Monday. The occasion was the official opening of ATLAS, which over the next six years will attempt to push the boundaries of what is possible in genomic techniques.

Its research will involve science and health science researchers from SDU and Odense University Hospital, and they were among the symposium's speakers during the scientific part of the event. They were also joined by international researchers.

Led by professor and molecular biologist Susanne Mandrup, ATLAS' researchers will investigate how different cell types in liver and fat tissue are changed by obesity, and the researchers will be among the first to look at cells inside living mice.

Using new techniques, they will decode what happens in different cell types inside the living tissue when the cells are exposed to external influences. In this way, ATLAS can gain an understanding of how cells communicate with each other and react to changes: an understanding which in the long term could influence the treatment of obesity-related illnesses.