She spends her days surrounded by flasks, test tubes and microscopes, and it says “Associate Professor and Researcher in Medical Biochemistry” on her visiting card. But Mette Madsen doesn’t exactly look like your typical dusty old scientist! Today she’s sitting at the end of a conference table in a dark-grey dress, chairing a meeting with her research group with a hot cup of tea steaming on the table in front of her. The room is buzzing with words like “primer”, “master mix” and “plasmids” as she asks her research group of students, lab technicians, PhD students and a single postdoc scholar what they have discovered during the past week of lab tests. Mette Madsen has risen through the ranks, and these days she spends less and less time in the laboratory carrying out her own experiments.

“It’s been my own choice. Applying for research funding, writing articles, teaching, supervising students and doing your own research takes all your time,” she explains.

“And I do so little lab work on a daily basis that I’m not as good as I used to be. The other members of the group do what they can to keep me on the sidelines,” she laughs.

Driven by results

Even though she is rarely the one juggling the pipettes these days, her constant hunger for results often drives her to walk the ten paces from her office to the laboratory to see what’s going on there.

“I think I am dependent on achieving results, and the rest of the group know this. Whenever I’m not in the office or lab, I’m always calling to find out how things are getting on.”

The results of her experiments and tests are what keep the fires of Madsen’s research heart burning.

“You can’t just wait for the great breakthrough. But even modest results and a single successful experiment can give me great pleasure on a daily basis. The results of your experiments surprise you sometimes, but then you just have to find out what you can learn from them anyway,” says Madsen. She seeks to instil the same attitude to research in her students.

Breakthrough

But actually there is a minor scientific breakthrough in the pipeline at her laboratory. Mette Madsen is still rather reticent and secretive about what’s involved, because she is still putting the finishing touches to an article in which she presents the results of her research.

The article will be assessed by an international academic journal before Christmas. This is the culmination so far of one of the research projects she has launched since 2010, when she received a major grant from the Danish Council for Independent Research under a programme called Sapere Aude for talented young researchers.

The grant also made it possible for her to put together a research group which currently comprises Madsen herself plus four Bachelor’s and Master’s students, two lab technicians, two PhD students and one postdoc scholar.

“We’ll have to see how it works out. We might be rejected – they might just send it back. It’s a good story whatever happens.”

However, it has to be said that Madsen is in no doubt that the group is onto something important.

Focus on birthmark cancer

Mette Madsen’s research focuses on some of the smallest building blocks in the human body: the proteins on the surface of a cell (known as membrane receptors) which can transport elements from the cell’s environment into the cell or activate various mechanisms such as cell divisions.

Among other things, her research group is studying whether cell receptors which would not normally be found in a healthy birthmark can suddenly be detected in a birthmark when genetic changes occur – as a result of sunburn, for instance. And they have made an exciting discovery.

“Our partnership with pathologists from Aarhus University Hospital has taught us that there aren’t really any markers to distinguish clearly between malignant and benign birthmarks. At the moment the assessment of birthmarks is based on other factors, and the problem with birthmark cancer is that if you don’t remove it before it spreads, there are hardly any kinds of effective treatment,” she explains. And she continues:

“So I thought: What if we managed to find a marker that could speed up the diagnosis of birthmark cancer and help the doctors to distinguish clearly between benign and malignant birthmarks?”

Madsen’s group now seem to have taken an important step in this direction. 

“We’ve discovered that some of the proteins we’re studying have a different form of expression in malignant and benign birthmarks.”

This means that Madsen and the rest of the research group may soon be able to present a discovery that in the long term would make it possible to develop a tool to improve the diagnosis and prognosis of birthmark cancer.

Important career step

The discovery is also important for Mette Madsen’s career.

“This is a project I started with the Sapere Aude grant I got in 2010. It’s taken some time to find the right angle, the right approach and the right contacts. For the first time I can truly say that my group has achieved something independently, and that I have taken research into receptors into new areas based on my interests. So this is a breakthrough in my career. My idea actually worked!”

However, her greatest pleasure is when she has the chance to share her results with hospital doctors – or at the “front line”, as she puts it.

“One of my most important tasks involves connecting our research to what’s going on at hospitals. Because doing basic research is all very well and good, but we also need reasons to justify what we do. Our results have to be useful in some way.”

Loves teaching

Life as a researcher involves far more than research results and breakthroughs. When Mette Madsen is not writing articles and applications or supervising the students in her group, she also teaches biochemistry to students of medicine. There are lectures and class teaching every semester, plus written examinations at the end of the semester and supervision for the Bachelor’s assignment written by sixth-semester students of medicine.

“I like teaching and I like telling stories about scientific knowledge in such a way that the students understand it. It’s also great when the things you discover as a researcher later turn into knowledge which is so significant that it’s included in the textbooks and becomes something that all students of medicine need to know,” she says.

But even though Mette Madsen likes teaching, research is her first love.

“Research is the real reason I’m here. I like teaching and get a lot of pleasure out of it. But it’s not why I’m here.”

A day in the life of a researcher

• 8.30-10.30: Meeting with laboratory group, consisting of lab technicians, students, PhD students and postdoc scholars.
• 10.30-12.00: Meeting with PhD student to discuss article
• 12.00-12.30: Lunch
• 13.00-14.30 Prepare exam questions for this semester’s exam
• 12.30-16.30: Write article, apply for funds etc.
• 16.30 Pick up the kids
• Evening: Read and write articles, check applications or prepare teaching.

Mette Madsen

• 39 years old
• PhD and associate professor in medical biochemistry at the Department of Biomedicine, Faculty of Health, Aarhus University.
• Research group manager and responsible for degree programme.
• Among other things, she has received the Lundbeck Foundation Talent Award 2003 and the Danish Council for Independent Research’s Young Elite Researcher Award 2005. She was also made Sapere Aude research manager in 2010 (Danish Council for Independent Research).
• In November she received a DKK 500,000 award from AU IDEAS.

Translated by Nicholas Wrigley