“Researching is a creative process that I never grow tired of. It’s just such incredible fun.”

Dr Mathias Uhlén received his PhD in chemistry at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden.  After a post-doc period at the EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany, he became professor in microbiology at KTH in 1998. Dr Uhlen has more than 350 publications in bioscience with the focus on the development and use of affinity reagents in biotechnology and biomedicine and his CV contains over 80 patents and a list of biotechnology companies. He is currently managing three large research projects. SciLifeLab, Science For Life Laboratory is the largest of Mathias Uhlén’s research projects. It aims to create a national infrastructure for medicinal and biological research.

In the eighties, he was the first to describe the use of affinity tags for purification of proteins, a principle now widely used in bioscience. In the 90:ies, his group described a new strategy for DNA analysis called Pyrosequencing, a method that was further developed by a US company (454/Roche) into the first of a new generation of next generation sequencing methods. His group also developed a new affinity reagent called Affibodies, based on combinatorial principles and, in addition, developed alkali-stable variations of protein A, now commercially available for purification of antibodies (MabSelectSure). In the early 2000, his group started an international effort, with groups in Sweden, India, China and South Korea, for the creation of a Human Protein Atlas with the aim to systematically map the human proteome with antibodies.

Dr Uhlen is member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science (IVA), the Royal Swedish Academy of Science (KVA), the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and member of the Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) council. He was Vice-President of the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), responsible for external relations, from 1999 to 2001. Recently, he became the Director of a new center Science for Life Laboratory Stockholm for high-throughput bioscience (www.scilifelab.org). He has received numerous awards, including the Göran Gustavsson prize, the Gold Medal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, the Akzo Noble Award, the HUPO Distinguished Award, the KTH Great Prize, the ABRF award, the Scheele prize and H.M. the King’s Medal with the ribbon of the Order of Seraphim.

Click here to watch a video about his work at Sci Life Lab.

Related links

• The Human Protein Atlas
• Mathias Uhlén: A research and entrepreneur extraordinaire
• Biosustain
• ProNova Center for Protein Technology
• SciLifeLab