Professor Anja Boisen has received an ERC Advanced Grant to pursue ground-breaking high-risk research.
In her project with the acronym FREJA, Professor Anja Boisen will explore new methods for improving oral drug delivery.
“It is a great honor to receive such a prestigious grant. Thanks to ERC for believing in us and to the amazing IDUN people for making this possible”, Professor Anja Boisen says.
“With the grant we expect to make major breakthroughs within device mediated oral drug delivery”, the delighted grant recipient adds.
"It is a great honor to receive such a prestigious grant. Thanks to ERC for believing in us and to the amazing IDUN people for making this possible"
Professor Anja Boisen
In fact, this is her second ERC Advanced grant. The first one – HERMES – ran from 2013-2018. One very few researchers have been awarded two of these highly competitive grants.
Better oral drug delivery
Oral delivery of in particularly protein or peptide-based drugs is very challenging as the drugs are degraded by our stomach acids and enzymes in the digestive system. The drug’s inability to cross the intestinal membrane barriers also poses a significant challenge.
To overcome these challenges, Anja and her team in the IDUN research group will investigate novel approaches to protect the active ingredients in drugs from the drug is ingested till it reaches the right place in the patient’s intestines. This includes devices that will deliver the drugs by embedding themselves into the bowel tissue to release the medicine into the body.
First off, the project will focus on insulin for diabetic patients, but the technology, once it is ready, will in principle be transferable to e.g., delivering vaccines in the form of a pill.
Head of Department Jan Ardenkjær-Larsen applauds, “Getting an ERC Advanced grant is an outstanding achievement. I am happy that we have such innovative scientists with ground-breaking ideas as well as excellent track records at DTU Health Tech, who can attract grants in this league. At DTU Health Tech we want to provide technology for people to make better lives, and this is a great example of exactly that.”
Read about more ERC grantees at DTU
ERC Advanced Grants provide an opportunity to well-established and outstanding scientists to pursue innovative, high-risk research. The goal is to support the best researchers and the most brilliant ideas in Europe that moves research as well as society forwards.
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