Nordic Life Science 1
In addition, another of his companies has just co
mpleted a phase 3 human clinical trial on COVID-19 patients. “We have worked hard to develop an AI-based drug to treat COVID-19 infections and in record time this has passed both phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trials together with collaborators in Turkey. We are now busy trying to get this pharmaceutical candidate into the clinic to help patients to combat the disease.” Among the lessons from the pandemic is the amount of collaborative work that can be done virtually, a trend Uhlén sees continuing after the virus is under control. “I used to travel abroad almost every week. This has of course now been replaced with no travel and virtual web-meetings,” he says. “Project meetings are now held exclusively virtually, making them in some ways more effective, but in other ways more boring.” He also believes that the pandemic has taught us the agility of the research community to adapt to new challenges and to quickly develop tools for society to combat new threats. “I am confident that we will be able to combat the next pandemic in a more prepared manner. Hopefully, this learning will also be fundamental to getting more resources to use science and technology to combat other world challenges, such as global warming. Another issue of great importance is the problem associated with increased antibiotic resistance. Politicians should join forces more effectively with the research community to use science and technology to help in the important fight against these societal challenges.” For the COVID pandemic, university labs were able to offer high testing capacity to the regions in Sweden already in April 2020, but this capacity was not used until much later due to logistic problems, adds Uhlén. “There are many lessons learned from this, including the importance of flexible IT systems, without sacrificing the patient security.” Mathias Uhlén earned his PhD at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm in 1984. After a postdoc period at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, he became a professor in microbiology at KTH in 1988. He has also been a guest professor in Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet since 2018 and for ten years he was also a part time professor in biotechnology at the Danish Technical University (DTU), in Copenhagen, Denmark. “It is interesting to compare the life science landscapes in Sweden and Denmark,” says Uhlén, “I believe Denmark in the past have been better on the business side of biotechnology, partly due to the fact that large companies, such as Novo Nordisk, Lundbeck, Novozymes and Christian Hansen, have a base in Denmark, while many companies in Sweden have moved abroad.” 32