Carl-Henrik Heldin and Oliver Billker receive ERC Advanced Grants

Two ERC Advanced Grants which have recently been awarded by the European Research Council (ERC) have a close relation to MIMS.

One € 2.5 million grant for a period of 5 years will the chair of the MIMS Executive Board professor Carl-Henrik Heldin receive for his project "Pro-tumorigenic effects of TGFb - elucidation of mechanisms and development of selective inhibitors". The second grant was awarded to Umeå University and to the recently appointed new MIMS Director Dr. Oliver Billker for his project: ”Sex in malaria parasites - from genome scale functional gene profiling to transmission blocking intervention targets”. Billker will start his lab at MIMS from 1st of October 2018. Congratulations to both grantees!

More information:
The ERC Advanced Grant (Press Release by the ERC 2018-04-06)
Webpage of Dr. Oliver Billker's laboratory
Webpage of Professor Carl-Henrik Heldin
Press release of Umeå University (only published in Swedish)
(Pictures: Uppsala University and private)

Battling antibiotic resistance

Scientists from MIMS and UCMR contributed to the movie "Battling antibiotic resistance" produced by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

Meet Umeå scientists Felipe Cava, Maria Fällman, Fredrik Almqvist, Elisabeth Sauer-Eriksson and Jörgen Johansson and MIMS Board member Birgitta Henriques Normark and their research on new antimicrobial strategies to fight antibiotic resistance.

Movie published by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, 20 February 2018.

Details of antibiotic resistance mechanisms revealed in hospital-acquired drug-resistant pathogens

[2018-03-02] A new paper published by the research groups of Gemma Atkinson and Vasili Hauryliuk at Umeå University resolves years of uncertainty about how the widespread antibiotic resistance factors in the protein group ABCF family confer resistance to lincosamide antibiotics, often used in treatment of infections caused by staphylococci, streptococci and anaerobic bacteria.

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development today and the new antimicrobial strategies are urgently needed. Scientists at the Umeå Centre for Microbial Research (UCMR) and at The Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS) study therefore also antibacterial resistance mechanisms in order to develop new therapeutic strategies against resistant bacteria. The researchers solved recently a mystery in antibiotic resistance research and published their findings in the journal Nucleic Acids Research, which specialises in leading edge research into nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA, and the proteins with which they interact.

Read more: Details of antibiotic resistance mechanisms revealed in hospital-acquired drug-resistant pathogens