Confirmed Speakers

Director of Department of Screening and Cell Technology, Biopharmaceuticals Research Unit, Novo Nordisk, Denmark. Current key responsibilities include design and implementation of efficient and robust screening assays to select and characterize therapeutic protein candidates in a broad span of haemophilia and inflammation projects within the Biopharmaceuticals Research Unit at Novo Nordisk. Previous professional experience includes 15 years of employment within research in biopharmaceutical industry as research scientist, principal scientist and project manager. Holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from University of Odense, Denmark, of which initial part was conducted at Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

Close window

Dr Thomas Hoeg-Jensen has 18 years of experience in insulin drug development and is co-inventor of insulin degludec, which is marketed by Novo Nordisk, where he is principal scientist. Thomas received his Ph.D. from University of Copenhagen in 1995 after studies on backbone modified peptides with Dr. Holm and Dr. Spatola, Louisville/USA. Apart from drug discovery, the work of Thomas has comprised boronate-based glucose sensors, peptide ligation methods and development of chemoinformatics systems for registration of chemically modified proteins. Thomas is currently adjunct professor at University of Copenhagen.

Close window

Professor Knud J. Jensen received his Ph.D. from the University of Copenhagen in 1992, for research carried out at the Carlsberg Laboratory. After postdoctoral work at the University of Minnesota, he became assistant professor at the Technical University of Denmark in 1997. In 2001 he moved to KVL, which in 2007 merged with the University of Copenhagen. Also in 2007, he was appointed professor at the University of Copenhagen. His research covers a broad range of topics at the interface between synthetic chemistry, biology, biophysics, medicinal chemistry, and nanobioscience. He has published more than 100 papers and was awarded the Leonidas Zervas award by the European Peptide Society in 2012.

Close window

Dr Jesper Lau studied biology and chemistry at University of Southern Denmark. After his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1990 and a research visitor stay in the group of Professor Barry Trost at Standford University in California, he joined Health Care Discovery at Novo Nordisk. In 1995 he became responsible for defining and implementing Combinatorial Chemistry in discovery projects at Novo Nordisk. In 2002 Jesper Lau was asked to establish a new department with competences within protein engineering. The main task was to create a research unit that should focus on establishing technologies to improve the therapeutic properties of endogenous peptides and proteins. Jesper Lau has 23 years experience in pharmaceutical discovery and holds a broad experience in small molecule based therapeutics as well as a comprehensive experience within protein engineering and has collaborated with several international research teams in various countries.He has optimised numerous leads to clinical candidates within diseases in the central nervous system, growth hormone disorders and especially within diabetes care with particular interest in glucagon like peptide 1 (GLP-1) where he was project responsible for once weekly GLP-1 and is first inventor of semaglutide. In addition to project management Jesper Lau has been line manager since 1995 and was in 2008 appointed Vice President of Protein and Peptide Chemistry with a staff of about 50 researchers. The responsibility of this research unit is to develop and apply peptide and protein chemistry technologies in order to identify novel peptide and protein based molecules of high value for Novo Nordisk current and future portfolio within diabetes & obesity care. Jesper Lau has published more than 40 papers and is inventor of more than 60 patent application families or issued patents.

Close window

Kristian Strømgaard received an MSc degree from University College London, a PhD degree from the Danish University of Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1999 and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. He is currently a Professor of Chemical Biology at the Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology, University of Copenhagen, where he is leading a research group of ca. 20 people with expertise in applying chemistry and biology in studies of in particularly membrane-bound proteins, including targeting disease relevant protein-protein interactions and studies of peptide and protein modifications.

Close window