On a drizzling, asphalt gray Monday morning, I
made my way down to København H to get on a charter bus set for our
first stop. I was bleary-eyed and tired, but the free coffee waiting for
us at Biopeople helped. There, we heard about how initiatives like
IN2LIFESCI and the European Patients’ Academy on Therapeutic Innovation
are connecting doctors, researchers, and patients to help build
relations between these normally disparate parties and improve
treatment.
From
there, we set out for Odense, the 3rd largest city in Denmark. The
drive there involved crossing the formerly longest suspension bridge in
the world which felt all the more harrowing with the strong gusts
pushing our boxy bus to and fro.
Once
we arrived, we went to Souther Denmark University to meet with a rep
from Brage Storstein Anderson’s research group. They work primarily with
spliceosomes and how alternative splicing in the human genome can cause
serious metabolic diseases. Afterwards, we got to look around some of
the labs which included a glimpse at a HiSeq machine that can analyze a
whole genome in just a few days (!).
After
a day of lectures, we went to our hostel which was surprisingly nice. I
shared a room with five other guys from my class. We each had a bunk
bed and had a private bathroom. We even got free breakfast in the
morning. Yeah, hostels aren’t too bad.
Tuesday began with
Stephen Fey of mc2 Biotek who probably gave the best, most passionate
lecture of the week. He is currently working on selling a machine that
he developed that is used to suspend cell cultures in three dimensions
rather than the measly two dimensions offered by the standard petri
dishes. His machine does this by slowly spinning the samples, creating
turbulence that simulates bloodflow, and it has proven to be a much more
accurate depiction of how real cells in human tissue react to drugs in
real 3D environments.
Then,
we had to drive up to Aarhus, the 2nd largest city in Denmark. Shortly
after arriving, we attended the university’s (I forget which one)
Dandrite conference where several researchers presented some of the work
that they and their labs were currently working on. I’ll be honest, I
wasn’t a huge fan of this one. I’m not really into neurology or
psychology, the overbearing subjects of this three hour long session.
Some of the talks felt like TEDx talks and barely skimmed the surface of
their topics while others were a tsunami of dense concepts that only
ostracized my feeble mind. Eh, at least they gave us free beers at the
end.
We
started our evening by going to our hotel right in the middle of the
old district. I gotta say, our room makes walk-in closets feel
luxurious. I could touch both walls with my elbows if I was doing the
chicken dance. We had a bunk bed that folded out from the wall, a desk
that had no place being in a room this small, and a bathroom that
immediately called to mind the cramped, plastic interior of an airplane
restroom. Luckily, we only needed to sleep there for one night.
We
had the chance to amble around the city on an uneventful Tuesday night.
I went with some of the guys to get Thai food which was delicious,
especially after our unsatisfying lunches. The canals were kind of
lovely in the lonely darkness of the shopping districts. One guy in our
group said that he had herd of a bar that was supposed to be bumping on
this dead weeknight, so we walked in circles looking for it while
drinking wine that we got at a 7-11. For about 45 minutes we just walked
and talked and acted like dumb (and loud) college students. IT wasn’t
so bad until we got to the bar and it was completely empty, save for the
bartenders. This being a letdown, we just stopped at the Sherlock
Holmes Bar where the middle-aged but still rockin’ Brit lad came over
and talked to us Americans. All in all, not bad.
Thankfully,
Wednesday had no lectures in store for us. However, it had something
much better. We went to the Aarhus Art Museum (ARoS) which had multiple
floors of interesting contemporary art. I absolutely loved this place
and the genuinely thought-provoking exhibits they had. The basement
level was pieces as part of a series on the 9 circles of Hell with one
piece standing out to me in particular: a pitch black room with an
eerily hazy red light emitting from behind a corner. I expected a shadow
to creep into its light at any moment. If you’ve played the horror game
PT like I ave, then this one will get to you.
Also,
this room full of mirrors with fake rafters did a fantastic job at
constantly making me think that I was high above some etherial theatre
stage.
Most of the museum was dedicated to an exhibit focused on
contemporary Chinese artists. It definitely made me consider the
cultural clash that China is experiencing right now. Their culture for
thousands of years has focused on preserving the past and not taking
anything for granted, and in today’s world of looking forward and
consuming, sometimes dissonance is created. Some of the notable pieces
to me included a surreal animation featuring a cartoon character
traversing a hostile, dark version of a child’s nightmare that
represented the reality of today’s violent, empty world and a tiger rug
made out of cigarettes, an oxymoronic medium as the tiger is considered
to be a symbol of health.
To
top it all off, the top of the museum is crowned with a panoramic ring
covered in a spectrum of colored glass that gives a unique vantage point
of the whole cityscape. I manages to get some video of the view and a
few pics.
Thursday
was back in Copenhagen where we visited the headquarters of Novo
Nordisk, one of the biggest companies in Denmark and the biggest name in
insulin production and diabetes research. The sleek facilities looked
straight out of a sci-fi movie. We heard from the VP of Research who
talked about the business aspects of their work and some current
endeavors to push out an improved insulin drug to replace an older
model.
The
rest of the day was spent hearing from Gert Mølgaard, a former
researcher who now works as a consultant for many biotech companies.
This guy knows how to keep people interested as he answered the big
questions like “Why do drugs stay so damn expensive in the States when
they’re much cheaper elsewhere?” Talking about the Patent Cliff as many
older drugs lose their patents and the rise of injectable protein
products kept me interested, so props to him. Friday was just class
lectures, nothing much.
I didn’t know what to expect going
into this week. It could have easily been a horrible, Death Valley-esque
dry week with no social interactions at all. Instead, I had a pretty
cool experience with some cool people in my class, and I got to see how
current researchers work right now in this quickly shifting field. All
in all, not bad. Not bad at all.
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Read more from Jake at http://jakernaut.tumblr.com/
To find out more about the DIS Copenhagen, Denmark program, visithttp://disabroad.org/copenhagen/