Marcus Wilhelmsson, professor at the department for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Is awarded Wallmarkska priset 2022 by The Royal Swedish Academy of Science. The prize is awarded "for groundbreaking research on biomimetic fluorescent molecules and their use for the development of fluorescence-based studies of DNA and RNA". The research can make a valuable impact for the development of new medicines and vaccines.
Hello Marcus and congratulations!
Thank you very much!
What can a prize like this mean for your research?
First of all it feels like an acknowledgment for the work my research group and I have done during a very long period of time – for fifteen to twenty years now. I see it as a prize for diligence and a few excellent findings which will boost us all. I am very happy about receiving this prize and grateful for all the creative and competent people in my group over the years and also collaborators. Apart from that this prize means that it can be mentioned in my cv and if the decision is on the marginal, it might also provide a little better chance to get financing for exciting new projects. On top of that major parts of the sum will be used for securing continued operations of our new company LanteRNA (more about that further down). That addition is crucial to be able to have skilled people that work together with us.
Can you tell us briefly what is happening right now in this research?
In the startup we are working on validation, verifying and scaling the technology up that we have been working on the last three to four years. To be able to deliver our technology to larger pharmaceutical companies we need to have a lot of things settled and also in good timing with the company financing which we are working hard on now. In the research group and together with the department for biology and biotechnology, we have recently found a new unique way which makes it possible for the cell to label its RNA with florescent building blocks, by itself. That can be very useful and it will be exciting to see how this discovery will be met within the research field. We plan to send an article and publish our result in a scientific journal after this summer.
Thank you very much, and good luck!
Read more
About the startup company LanteRNA
Link to LanteRNA website
News articles and press releases about the research
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- Full Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering