Our research
We have developed a fully synthetic lung surfactant preparation, based on designed analogues of surfactant proteins SP-B and SP-C, for treatment of respiratory distress syndrome in premature infants. Together with a pharmaceutical company we have taken the artificial surfactant to a just finished phase II clinical trial, which showed equal treatment effects as the most efficient natural derived surfactant.
Early work on SP-C lead to the discovery of a molecular chaperone domain (BRICHOS) that is the first described example of an endogenous defence against amyloid formation and toxicity. We have described physiological roles for BRICHOS and how dysfunction as a consequence of mutations can give rise to human disease. Based on these insights we are developing BRICHOS based biologic drugs against Alzheimer’s disease, which we are currently testing in mouse models with promising results.
We are also studying structural and functional properties of spider silk proteins and their constituent domains, with the ambition to understand how spider silk formation occurs in nature. By doing this we hope to be able to develop biomimetic artificial spider silk materials and biotechnological tools.