reNEW Copenhagen welcomes Principal Investigator Max Friesen
Friesen has a background in Molecular Medicine and knew early on that he wanted to work with human pluripotent stem cells. He completed his PhD in Chad Cowan's lab at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and continued as a Postdoc with Rudolf Jaenisch and Rick Young at the Whitehead Institute.
Throughout his time in the US, he worked consistently on pluripotent stem cell-based disease models to study metabolic disease, and in particular type 2 diabetes. His research focused on adipose tissue and fat cells, comparing healthy versus insulin-resistant cells in a dish, and has uncovered new mechanisms of how insulin signaling works at the molecular level.
At reNEW, Friesen’s goal is to translate his research into novel therapies that intervene at a stage before the target of most current therapies.
"I want to focus my research on the very early stage of when someone transitions from a healthy person into an insulin-resistant person and eventually becomes type 2 diabetic. I think that if we can intervene at that stage and prevent or even reverse the progression, in a way people can actually adhere to, that would be therapeutically very powerful," said Friesen.
Looking ahead, he plans to expand beyond fat cells to other tissues involved in metabolic disease, and to explore additional signaling pathways such as GLP-1 and glucagon, while continuing his mechanistic work on insulin signaling.