Chief Scientific Officer
M.Sc., Ph.D.
About Lars Thomsen
Lars Thomsen M.Sc., Ph.D. – the Chief Scientific Officer has a long scientific carrier with work ranging from breakthrough scientific discovery within physiology to inventing novel biological methods and devices and propelling these forward for commercialization and years in the tropical forests in South East Asia searching for novel compounds to cures for cancer and antibiotic-resistant infections. Lars Thomsen has worked and thrived in almost all cultures in the world from Asia, Middle-east to Europe and the Americas. As a young researcher, he worked at McMaster University under a scholarship granted by the Carlsberg Foundation and he succeeds in being the first in the world to provide single cell evidence for the pacemaker function of the gut belonging to the Interstitial Cells of Cajal – a paper published in the high ranking journal Nature Medicine (a paper with more than 300 citations and which is listed in the top 25% of all scientific publications) and which settled a two-decade debate of the origin of the pacemaker signal in the gastrointestinal system. A work that today is textbook teaching for university graduates and is listed in the Online Mendelian Database OMIN of functions of human life.
Following the publication in Nature Medicine Lars Thomsen was headhunted for a position in the target discovery group at AstraZeneca (top 15 pharmaceutical company in the world) where his work was to discover novel molecular targets for known and emerging diseases using a range of advanced single-cell technologies. Here invented improvements on the Neher-Sakmann Nobel price winning technique which later became the foundations for companies like Nanion and Sophion Bioscience (a Neurosearch spin-off).
In 2005 Lars Thomsen won the Danish Engineering Society price for a biological warfare agent detection chip making it possible to do aerosol detection of BWA’s in less than 10 minutes. The price was a personal price of 100.000 DKK handed over by Haldor Topsoe – the highly respected and well-known veteran of Danish engineering. The same year Lars Thomsen signed a commercial agreement with Westland Helicopters a company under the defense supplier Leonardo (9 largest defense contractor) a work carried out with RTX as partner. a danish public traded IT company. The system was found of so high importance that a dedicated treaty between Denmark and Sweden were formed to accommodate the research effort. The same year the system was proven in military field trials in Denmark and UK (Porton Down, under DSTL)
In 2008 and 2010 Lars Thomsen won two awards from Spring Singapore for development of a fully automated diagnostic device for human clinical diagnostics.
In 2010 Lars Thomsen together with Soiwsia Soikum invented a novel nanotechnology improving the lysis efficiency of cells – a technology with applications in obesity treatment, cancer and even killing of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms. A US patent was granted in 2017 on the matter.
In 2012 he achieved to head an enterprise that signed an agreement with Perak State, Malaysia for mutual beneficial exploitation of the rainforest in Northern Malaysia with the aim of providing insights into the value of preserving the rainforest for pharmaceutical use. Under the same project, a collaboration was carried with Professor in ecology and population genetics Soeren Rosendahl, Copenhagen University who assisted the project by teaching the rain-forest sampling staff in how to find and identify fungi in the rainforest floor. Other researchers contributed with optimizing the sample prep for preserving natural compounds when the collection is done at 40 °C, as well as software and hardware, were developed for 10 cm accuracy on relocating the specimen sample location.
In 2014 Lars Thomsen and Soiwisa Soikum created a novel concept of precise heat control of multiple wells allowing asynchronous experimentation which in 2019 has resulted in a granted US patent on the matter.
LT has authored more than 30 patents being the foundations for multiple biotech companies
Timeline
Lars Thomsen, M.Sc., Ph.D.
US patent on asynchroneous precision heating and control
In 2019 Soiwisa Soikum and Lars Thomsen achieved that a patent filed in 2014 on asynchronous heating and precision temperature control of a sample was granted in the US. The patent was in the very competitive PCR market where patents..Read More
US Patent on Nanotech Cell Lysis
In 2017 Soiwisa Soikum, Lars Thomsen and John Dodgson achieved that a patent filed in 2011 on nanotechnology for cell lysis was granted in US. The patent was in competition with Dr Davalos from Virginia Tech who also reported similar..Read More
Search for biological active compounds in the rainforest
In 2011 Lars Thomsen signed an agreement with Perak State about extraction about biological active compounds from the rainforest for development of novel natural compounds with much higher affinity for biological disease targets compared to synthetic chemicals. The picture shows..Read More
Commercial Contract with Leonardo
Lars Thomsen signed a commercial agreement with Westland Helicopters a company under the defense supplier Leonardo (9 largest defense contractor) a work carried out with RTX as partner. a danish public traded IT company. The agreement was signed on the Excel Defence Industry..Read More
High Tech Award – Danish Engineering Society
In 2005 Lars Thomsen received the Danish Engineering Society High-Tech Award for the development of a fully automated biological warfare agent detection chip. The award was given to Lars Thomsen although he didnt hold an engineering degree but had an..Read More
Biological Warfare Agent Detection Chip
In 2001 before the 9/11 attacks, Lars Thomsen was in related matters to patch-clamping working with the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) in Sweden about the development of a biological warfare agent detection system. At the outbreak of the Anthrax..Read More
Automated Patchclamp, Sophion Bio/Astrazeneca
Invented in the period 1999 to 2000 several patents in Astrazeneca and in the Neurosearch spin-off Sophion Bioscience . The inventions made in these years were a significant improvement on the Nobelprize winning patch-clamp technique 1991 by Erwin Neher and..Read More
Researcher, Astrazeneca
Lars Thomsen was headhunted to AstraZeneca in 1998/1999 for working in a new Target Discovery group with the aim of identifying novel targets in existing and emerging diseases. The work involved advanced trangenetics using mice in which individual genes have..Read More
Post-doc McMaster University, Canada
In 1996 the Carlsberg Foundation awarded Lars Thomsen a two-year post-doctoral stay at McMaster University for investigation of the origin of the pacemaker signal in the gastrointestinal system. A hypothesis has been formulated by anatomical studies by Dr. Lars Thuneberg..Read More
Ph.D. Neurophysiology, Copenhagen University
Lars Thomsen obtained his Ph.D. degree from Copenhagen University in Neurophysiology on the topic “Characterization of the enteric nervous system in the porcine small intestine”. A work that required surgical skills in dissecting sheets of neuronal tissue from a large..Read More
Contributions to Science
Nanoparticle enhanced cell lysis
Dating back to 2001 working on a joint Danish and Swedish Defense program Lars Thomsen improved the release of DNA from the biological weapon Anthrax by using a chip technology and optimized electroporation techniques. In 2010 he filed a patent…Read More
Improvement of the Nobel Prize Winning Patch Clamp Technique
In a series of developments documented in forms of patents first as researcher at Astrazeneca and later as researcher at Sophion Bioscience the patch clamp technique was transformed from a manual technique requiring a high level of training and physical…Read More
Interstitial Cells of Cajal as pacemakers in the gastrointestinal system
The discovery of the Interstitial Cells of Cajal as pacemakers of the gastro-intestinal system originated by research of Dr Lars Thuneberg, Panum Institute, Copenhagen University. Dr Thuneberg had developed very gently forms of fixation for electron microscopy that allowed him…Read More