Nordic Life Science 1
and provides more information about proteins than
anyone had compiled before. The atlas team is using an integration of various omics technologies, including antibody-based imaging, mass spectrometry-based proteomics, transcriptomics and systems biology. “We have more than 300,000 visits to the open access resource every month and I believe that the knowledge in the atlas provides a basis for a large portion of medical research, both in academia and industry,” Uhlén adds. However, last year was different in many ways. The team focused a lot on the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, with efforts to try to understand the biology of the virus and research to study the immune responses across the population. “On the business side, I co-founded a coronavirus diagnostics company and this company now has close to 100 employees,” Uhlén says. “We have set up one of the largest facilities for PCR-testing in Sweden, using the experience from the HPA program aimed to help the government and the health system to combat the disease.”