“The interdisciplinary approach enables us to learn from each other”

Maya Berg from the University of Antwerp has been working with X-HiDE for six years and has collaborated on different levels: from visits by PhD students and research applications to lectures. She is a senior research manager at Infla-Med, a Centre of Excellence in Belgium, and now acts as a mentor as X-HiDE establishes itself as a Centre of Excellence in Sweden.

“I think X-HiDE and Infla-Med complement each other very well. We mainly focus on translational research in the field of inflammation via a target-based approach, while X-HiDE contributes to the same field with a systems analytical approach. They do what we are missing – and vice versa,” says Maya Berg.

Martin Andersson, Chief Scientific Officer at Sprint Bioscience AB, a Swedish life science company that develops new cancer drugs. He views the collaboration within X-HiDE as an opportunity for the company to further enhance its product development capabilities.

“Within X-HiDE, we learn about the role of the immune system and how it is affected by other diseases. This provides us with new ideas and helps us understand how the drugs we develop can be utilised effectively. We also hope to gain completely new ideas for how we can develop new cancer drugs,” explains Martin Andersson.

Kaya Tuerxun recently completed her PhD within X-HiDE and now works as a researcher in one of the ongoing projects.

“My research focuses on the impaired immune response in sepsis, and similar process can be seen in other disease conditions. The interdisciplinary approach enables us to learn from one another and, in the long term, discover ways to apply our research in clinical settings.”

She considers meeting other researchers and companies within X-HiDE to be of great value.

“It’s inspiring to to learn about others’ work and their progress. At the same time, it opens opportunities for new collaborations,” says Kaya Tuerxun.