Prof. Helena Danielson
Faculty of Science and Technology
Dept. of Chemistry - BMC
Uppsala University
SE-751 23 Uppsala
Sweden
Phone: +46 18 4714545
helena.danielsonkemi.uuse
http://www.kemi.uu.se

Helena Danielson is Professor of Biochemistry at Uppsala University in Sweden since 2002. She is a specialist in enzymology and enzyme-based drug discovery.

Training and career: Helena Danielson received a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering at Lund University  in 1982 and, as a Fulbright scholar, she received a Master of Science in Biochemistry, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA in 1984, and thereafter a Ph. D. in Biochemistry at Stockholm University in 1987. As a postdoc at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm Helena Danielson started a research project on HIV protease as a drug target for AIDS, and has since expanded her research to other enzymes and diseases, more recently also with an interest in membrane receptors and neurological drug targets. She has been at Uppsala University since 1988.

Scientific profile: Helena Danielson has focused on developing enzymology for drug discovery, and in particular biomolecular interaction analysis for detailed studies of enzyme-inhibitor interactions and other important recognition processes in the life science area. Her work has involved studies of a variety of enzymes, primarily proteases and polymerases from viruses and other infectious organisms, or involved in important disease processes. The work has involved developing bphysical methods for fragtement-based drug discovery. She has extensive experience of the commercial drug discovery process through 20 years of collaborative research with partners in pharmaceutical and biotechnological industry. An important collaboration with Biacore AB was initiated in 1997 and has resulted in adapting biosensor technology for drug discovery and the development of new biosensor products for the drug discovery industry.

Entrepreneurial achievements: Helena Danielson co-founded Beactica AB in 2006 and was Chief Scientific Officer until 2015. The company is a specialist drug discovery company that generates novel drug leads from low molecular weight fragments by integrating biomolecular interaction analysis with in silico molecular docking techniques.