Morten G. Rasch

Ph.d. student

Key Research Interests
Murine monoclonal antibodies against murine proteins, proteases, tissue remodelling, cancerinvasion, intravital microscopy in live animals.

Current Project
Matrix Metalloprotease-9 (MMP-9) has been shown to be involved in progression and angiogenesis in several different cancers. Neutralizing the proteolytic function of this protease by therapeutic intervention might therefore be an attractive approach for cancer treatment. However, even greater impact may be possible if MMP-9 is neutralized in combination with other targets or chemotherapy.

One of the major goals of my Ph.D. project is to develop inhibitory monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against murine MMP-9. The method used to obtain this is immunization of MMP-9 deficient mice with different fragments of recombinant murine MMP-9 protein. Currently, I have developed a panel of highly specific mAbs against murine MMP-9 of which some inhibits the proteolytic activity of MMP-9. Further validations of these mAbs are needed before they can be used for in vivo experiments.

Ongoing plans involve exploration of the mAbs functional properties in vivo in murine cancer models, either alone or combination with other drugs.

Recently, I have been trained for six months in immunohistochemistry and spinning-disc confocal microscopy of live mice in Mikala Egeblads laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY, US. In close collaboration with M.Egeblad, I studied the role of MMP-9 in two different murine breast cancer models and found significantly different roles of MMP-9 in the two models. Furthermore, I conjugated my MMP-9 mAbs with fluorophores and used them for intravital microscopy in order to study the migrational behaviour of MMP-9 expressing cells in real-time in live tumor bearing animals.

Career
2001: Matriculated at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, studying chemistry and molecular biology.

2004: Bachelor in chemistry and molecular biology.

2007: Cand.scient. Master thesis at the Finsen Laboratory, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark

2007: Research assistant at the Finsen Laboratory

2008: Matriculated as Ph.D. student at Department of Health, University of Copenhagen. Project performed at the Finsen Laboratory.

2010: Six month stay at Ass. Prof. Mikala Egeblads laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, NY, US. During the stay I received extensive training in immunohistochemical methods and spinning-disc confocal microscopy of live mice.