Kristian Helin

Kristian Helin is the founding director of the Biotech Research & Innovation Centre (BRIC) at the University of Copenhagen. He is also the director of the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Epigenetics, professor of Biomedical Gene Technology at the University of Copenhagen and director of the PhD program Molecular Mechanisms of Disease. Dr. Helin is a co-founder of the biotech company EpiTherapeutics, where he is member of the board of directors and chair of the scientific advisory board. Dr. Helin obtained his PhD from the University of Copenhagen in 1991, and performed post-doctoral work at Harvard Medical School, where he cloned the first member of the E2F transcription factor family. Subsequently, Dr. Helin was a group leader at the Danish Cancer Society in Copenhagen and a Division Director at the European Institute of Oncology from 1995-2004.

The major aim of the research in the Helin group is to elucidate the molecular mechanisms leading to cancer with the aim of identifying novel anti-cancer thereapies. The research group has made several key discoveries in the area of cell cycle regulation, apoptosis and DNA replication. In the last 5-7 years the group has been increasingly more active in the area of epigenetics and stem cells, which is the main focus of the research in the group today. This research has led to the identification of novel mechanisms for the control of stem cell self-renewal and differentiation, the identification of novel enzymatic activities regulating histone methylation, and to important new insights into how cancer develops. Prof. Helin is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation and the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters.