Lundbeck Foundation Fellowship of DKK 10 million to ISIM researcher
Mikkel Herly, who is newly appointed Associate Professor at the Department of Immunology and Microbiology, University of Copenhagen has received a fellowship totaling DKK 10 million from the Lundbeck Foundation for the project ‘Strategies preventing implant rejection after breast reconstruction’.
The Lundbeck Foundation Fellowship will enable Mikkel Herly to establish himself as research leader of his own group at the University of Copenhagen and Rigshospitalet.
Mikkel Herly’s research will investigate capsular contracture, which is a process where the immune system rejects breast implants, which particularly affect women who receive breast reconstruction after cancer. The hypothesis is that bacteria on the surface of the breast implants determine whether the women reject their implants.
Together with his group, Mikkel Herly will investigate the interaction between bacteria on the implant surface and the body's immune response. The research is based on the world's largest biobank of breast implants and biopsies from the fibrous capsule that encapsulate the implant from more than 800 women, that Mikkel Herly and his group have collected.
Mikkel Herly hopes that his research will lead to new strategies for preventing and treating capsular contracture in women undergoing breast reconstruction after cancer, and that the new knowledge can also benefit other patients with implants.
Mikkel Herly and Lundbeck Foundation