New Funding for Research in Appetite Regulation

Professor Birgitte Holst receives Proof of Concept grant from the BioInnovation Institute (BII) for a research project in appetite regulation with commercial potential.

The idea behind the BII’s Proof of Concept grant is to support research with a clear commercial focus with regard to translating new findings into solutions that may benefit our health and society. A total of 70 projects have applied, but only eight projects – two of which come from SUND – have managed to get through the eye of the needle. Each project will run for 12 months, and the eight projects each receive between DKK 695,000 and 1 million.

The second receiver from SUND is Associate Professor Rikke Heidemann Olsen, Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, who just as Professor Birgitte Holst receives the much-coveted research grant for her research.

New Ways of Diminishing the Appetite

Birgitte Holsts project is entitled ‘Anti-obesity effect of combination therapy acting on different neuronal populations, that allows for synergistic action on appetite regulation’.

Birgitte Holst is Professor with Special Responsibilities in Pharmacology focussing on molecular metabolism and researching overweight and diabetes. Her main research consists, among other things, of studying how drugs affect the body’s tendencies to overeat. 

‘In most overweight and severely overweight people, the main reason for overweight is overeating. But we still do not know why these people overeat. Seeking to diminish their appetite, we try to target pathways in the brain, but we know that it is necessary to hit more than one pathway. Using the new peptide that we will be studying in this project we may be able to hit new parts of the brain and thus potentially dim the appetite of overweight people’, says Birgitte Holst.

In addition to her employment at the Department of Biomedical Sciences, Birgitte Holst is also affiliated to the Novo Nordic Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research.