Group members

Group leaders

Trond Ulven

Trond is professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Copenhagen. He received his dr. ing. degree from the Norwegian University of Technology and Science in 1999. Thereafter, he was postdoc at the Scripps Research Institute before joining the Danish startup company 7TM Pharma in 2001. In 2005, he moved to the University of Southern Denmark to establish his independent academic research group. His research interests include medicinal chemistry, drug discovery and development of synthetic methods with potential use in these areas. In January 2018, he joined the University of Copenhagen.

Elisabeth Rexen Ulven

Elisabeth is assistant professor funded by the Lundbeck Fondation and leads a project directed towards the short-chain fatty acid receptor FFA3, a collaboration with the University of Copenhagen and the University of Glasgow. She also leads the medicinal chemistry part of a project on the succinate receptor GPR91 that is based at the University of Copenhagen. Elisabeth is also interested in development of fluorescent tool compounds. She received her PhD from the University of Southern Denmark in 2012

PhD students

Athanasios Papangelis

Nassos’ PhD project is focused on elucidating the roles of the free fatty acid receptors FFA1 and FFA4 in the CNS, including development of brain penetrant specific FFA1 and FFA4 modulators and tools to evaluate the exposure of the brain to dietary fatty acid. He received his MSc degree in pharmaceutical sciences from the University of Copenhagen in 2017.

Mads Mandrup Kaspersen

Mads’ PhD project is within the FFARMED project and involves synthesis of fatty acid derivatives and development of ligands for the receptor GPR84. He has his MSc degree from the University of Southern Denmark.

Loukas Ieremias

Loukas’ PhD project is focused on free fatty acid receptors in inflammatory diseases. He received his MSc degree in medicinal chemistry from the University of Copenhagen in 2018.

Reseach assistants

Simone Fratta

Simone is working on the free fatty acid 2 receptor. He received his MSc degree in pharmaceutical chemistry and technologies from Sapienza University in Rome in 2017.

Rina Pokhrel

Rina is setting up screening assays for the fatty acid receptors. She is from Nepal and has a MSc degree in medicinal chemistry from the University of Copenhagen from 2018.

Master students

Lieke van Gijzel

Lieke is working on the synthesis of peptides targeted at GPR15. During this project she is collaborating with the Olsen group, the Bräuner-Osborne group and the Gloriam group. She is from the Netherlands and is working on a double MSc degree at the VU Amsterdam and the University of Copenhagen.

The Ulven Group