→ return to THE news archive

TMS Starting Grant to three outstanding researchers

First published at UiB.no on November 30, 2023

Henriette Aksnes, Gabriele de Seta, and Jana Birke Belschner are this year's recipients of the Trond Mohn stiftelse (TMS) Starting Grant. The three will receive the award as part of the Trond Mohn Foundation's annual celebration in the University Hall on December 1st.

Henriette Aksnes from the Arnesen lab at the Department of Biomedicine receives the TMS Starting Grant for the project: "The role of membrane protein modifications in age-related brain pathology (MemBrain)".

The project stems from her PhD, and further a collaboration with neuroclinicians in London, where they recently showed that the protein NAA60 is linked to a genetic condition with severe brain calcifications.

- But we know nothing about how this happens. The funding from TMS gives me the opportunity to start studies to find out exactly this. I believe that it will be very important to better understand brain calcifications and how they are connected to dementia diseases, says Aksnes, and adds:

- Calcifications in the brain are an understudied factor in neurodegenerative diseases. Many people associate calcification with disease states in joints or blood vessels, but it is also very common in the brain, just that we do not know the consequences of it. By looking at how brain calcifications occur and interact with other factors, I hope that this project will contribute to new insights into dementia diseases - and thus shed light on new treatment options.

Click here to read more on UiB´s website (Norwegian).