The course featured 46 national and international experts in the field teaching a broad array of molecular medicine topics such as disease mechanisms and development, animal models of disease, imaging disease, computational biology, health registries and biomarker discovery, virology and immunology, tailored and personalised medicine, computational biology, advanced cell-based therapies and neuroscience.
A glimpse into cutting edge research
Each of the topics were given a dedicated day, filled with several speakers introducing their research projects.
One of the speakers, Professor Dori Derdikman leading the Spatial Perception and Memory Lab at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, shared his research into spatial representations in the brain to an eager and attentive group of students. He commented:
– Today we brought forward a glimpse into cutting edge research from several brain labs around Europe, and the students got an idea of ongoing issues at the forefront of neuroscience. We discussed research on sleep and on spatial representations in the brain, considering burning questions which don't always have clear-cut answers. This way the students were able to take part in a more realistic form of science, beyond textbook, which is live and in constant development.
Opportunity to experience real-life research problems
NCMM has been hosting the national Molecular Medicine research course annually since 2011. This year 30 PhD students from University of Oslo and Oslo University Hospital registered for this intensive course. For basic science early-career researchers, the course provided insights into translational and clinical aspects of molecular medicine. Conversely, those working in clinical medicine gained new insights into molecular mechanisms, disease models and preclinical studies.
Charlotte Boccara, one of the course organisers, stated that this is an intensive but highly rewarding programme that offers a unique opportunity to experience real-life research problems while participating in a conference-like relevant scientific discussions. I am actually a bit jealous of these students! she said.
– I would have loved to have this such an opportunity as a PhD student to hear about cutting edge and unpublished research that’s going on right now in top institutes in Scandinavia and around the world.
– Precisely because the course offers a wide array of subjects, it is not only about gaining new knowledge, but also extending the students’ knowledge of the areas they do not know, thereby broadening their view of what they can plan for their future experiments or for the next step in their career as postdoctoral researchers, she reminded.
Showcasing advances in the medical research field
One of the course participants, Steffen Maude Fagerland, is doing a PhD in neuroscience, that is a collaboration between Oslo University Hospital, UiO, the Hospital in Vestfold, and Nordic Neurotech - a private company where he is the lead neuroscientist.
What he found most interesting about the course was that it showed how today's technology can make molecular/personalised medicine available to the wider public.
– I have a background in nanotechnology, so I have some insight into several of the mechanisms and methods. I chose this course also because I knew it would showcase how far Norway has come with respect to the medical research front, he said.
Steffen has a particular personal interest in neuroscience. Having suffered brain injury himself in his youth, it gave him a motivation to study and understand brain damages, exploring new therapeutics (you can read more about his story in Norwegian here). He therefore found the final Friday dedicated to neuroscience particularly interesting.
– The topic of my PhD is targeted brain training. I therefore found the topics on Friday especially interesting, as episodic memory and how to enhance/strengthen this is a topic that I will try optimise in the new treatment I’m developing through my PhD. Thus "understanding how we understand" mechanisms within the brain, and especially memory, and how to scale this is key for my PhD, he concluded.