Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Design

About

Imagine if proteins could be specifically designed to provide even more versatile molecular toolboxes for science, technology, and healthcare. For example, protein design could lead to molecular tools that detect or cure disease directly in the body.

It could also produce proteins with industrial and environmental applications, such as enabling greener pharmaceutical production or the ability to break down plastics and other pollutants. While there is still a lot of work to do before the full potential of protein design can be realised, the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Design is driving efforts to realise this potential.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Design is a new initiative in research that encompasses the growing protein design landscape with computational, experimental, applied, and hybrid approaches. The Center is hosted by the Department of Biology (Faculty of Science) and the Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology (Faculty of Health and Medical Science) at the University of Copenhagen. It is a multidisciplinary center that will work with departments across the university—Biology, Chemistry, Drug Design & Pharmacology, Pharmacy, Physics, Computer Science, and more—and with national and international academic and industrial partners.

At capacity, it is anticipated that the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Design will have eight research groups, and approximately 70-80 researchers and support staff.

The vision and mission of the centre

• To accelerate protein design by developing a deeper understanding of sequence-to-structure/function relationships in proteins, and methods to programme these into functional designed proteins.
• To train the next generation of protein scientists for careers in protein design and engineering; and to apply protein-design methods to a diverse array of fundamental and real-world challenges.