Lundbeck Foundation Grant for better understanding of brain diseases
Jasmin Mecinovic, associate professor, FKF, has received a Lundbeck Foundation Ascending Investigator grant, DKK 4,999,500, to continue his research into the brain's so-called epigenetic enzymes.
Genes are not the only hereditary information found in our cells.
Researchers now know that diseases occur not only as a result of changes in the genetic code, but also as a result of chemical mechanisms that affect our genes – for instance caused by enzymes.
These mechanisms can be copied and passed on from one cell generation to another just like genes, making them a crucial part of understanding a wide range of diseases.
Jasmin Mecinovic will use the grant to develop new chemical tools for studying epigenetic enzymes at the molecular level. They are interesting because they have the potential to fight, for example, cancer and neurological diseases.
While there has been a lot of focus on their relevance for cancer, the great advances are still to come in terms of neurological diseases.
Jasmin Mecinovic is also an ERC Starting Grant holder for project The chemical understanding of biomolecular recognition in epigenetics and the Novo Nordisk-supported project Understanding the biochemical basis for the recognition of crotonyllysine by YEATS domain.