The grant as a Lundbeck Foundation fellow, to be paid out over five years, enables Azadeh Shahsavar to establish her own research group at UCPH, where she and her team will study the structure and function of proteins that transport glycine and glutamine in the brain.

Glycine and glutamine are amino acids that each play key roles in the extremely complex signalling process between nerve cells that takes place in the brain. Dysregulation of their homeostasis is associated with a number of neurological disorders, where glycine and glutamine do not fulfil their roles optimally.

Azadeh Shahsavar, age 38, hopes that expanding our understanding of the proteins which transport glycine and glutamine in the brain can pave the way for the development of new pharmaceuticals to treat neurological disorders and possibly even cancer.

Azadeh Shahsavar:

"I feel extremely honoured to have been awarded a Lundbeckfonden fellowship to start my own research group. This, of course, wouldn't have been possible without the support of my PhD and Postdoc supervisors, mentors, and very many great scientists over the years. I'd like to express my special gratitude to Poul Nissen, who trusted me as a newly graduated PhD student and supported me all the way to independence."

Azadeh Shahsavar worked as a postdoc in Poul Nissen's group at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, AU, from 2014-2016, after which she was a postdoc at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Hamburg from 2016-2019. In 2019, Azadeh returned as an assistant professor in Poul Nissen's group.

Azadeh Shahsavar will start as an assistant professor at the Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology, University of Copenhagen on 1 July 2022.

In 2022, The Lundbeck Foundation is awarding a total of DKK 70 million to this year's fellows – of which the Department of Molecular Biology has a share in two of the grants.

In addition to Azadeh Shahsavar, Xavier Bofill De Ros also receives a Lundbeck Foundation grant of EUR 1.344 million. He will be affiliated with the Section for RNA Biology and Innovation at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, where he intends to investigate, among other things, whether poorly functioning microRNAs may be involved in tumour development. Xavier Bofill De Ros comes from a postdoctoral position at the RNA Biology Laboratory, National Cancer Institute, Frederick, USA.

More information

Assistant Professor Azadeh Shahsavarf
Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics
Aarhus university
ash@mbg.au.dk