[ad_1]
Marcus Wallenberg says it with a slightly suppressed smile, but admits he “applauded” when Emmanuelle Charpentier received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this week. Among other things, money from the Wallenberg family supported the research community in Umeå, where they developed their pioneering genetic scissors.
– You hope you can do good and it is about developing skills in Sweden. We are little more than ten million people, we cannot be good at everything, but we must gather forces where we believe we can make a difference, says Marcus Wallenberg to DN.
The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (KAW), where he is vice president, does so around the life sciences, where biology, biotechnology, genetics and medicine are combined. Around SEK 2 billion are distributed each year for basic research and education in Sweden.
Now a specific investment is being made make Sweden a world nation in a growing branch of research: the computer-driven life sciences. 3.1 billion by 2032 will provide space for several hundred doctoral students and researchers. 39 of them must be “absolute world class”.
Marcus Wallenberg and Siv Andersson, professor of molecular evolution
Photo: Alexander Mahmoud
– Here basic research in life sciences will meet the computing power of supercomputers, we just contributed one in Linköping, and AI, which we are working on in our WASP project. It will lead to new discoveries and bring expertise to Sweden.
What are your hopes?
– That we can develop diagnoses and treatments that adapt to the cellular and protein structure of the individual human being. Precision medicine that can save lives, says Marcus Wallenberg, who has been on the board of Astra Zeneca for three decades.
KAW owns directly and indirectly, through Investor and FAM, heavy goods in large companies such as Ericsson, Husqvarna, Electrolux and SKF. The dividend from that is invested in research.
On the contrary, does the research benefit your companies?
– No, we will benefit Sweden. Our statutes say that our business must be “for the benefit of the country”, it is a sacred principle for the family.
– But one can only hope that Swedish companies realize what comes from the Swedish research, sometimes I think they don’t understand it. It will become more and more important in the future.
“Computer-Driven Life Sciences“ It is a difficult concept, so with your hand on your heart, do you understand yourself what it is that you support?
– I’m not a scientist at all. When you are so far ahead of what you support, you must realize that great employees are the most important thing. They trust their knowledge and assess whether there is a reasonable chance of reaching the goal.
Siv Andersson, Professor of Molecular Evolution at Uppsala University
Photo: Alexander Mahmoud
One of them is Siv Andersson, professor of molecular evolution at Uppsala University. He is responsible for basic research at KAW and has planned the initiative together with Professor Göran Sandberg.
– When we started mapping the human genome 20 years ago, it was like a moon landing project. Then it took years to decide your gene pool, today it comes in one day and at a fraction of the cost. The development of technology has provided an incomprehensibly large amount of data, but we don’t have time to analyze it, he says.
So now a great IT person will come and scan the piles of documents and find new truths?
– Together we do it. They can make interesting statistics, biologists have to interpret them. With machine learning, big data and artificial intelligence, we can find new connections, new problems to move on.
Data-driven research It will be used in everything from cell and molecular biology and biodiversity to precision medicine and the spread of infections.
– Every human being has something like 10,000 trillion cells, but we know a lot about them. For example, we want to be able to better describe exactly how a cancer cell develops in an individual and how it responds to different treatments.
How is the spread of infection investigated?
– Already today, computers simulate how well different small molecules fight viruses, it will do even more. And if we know the genetic makeup of people, we could find risk factors and be able to devise a better strategy against spread, says Siv Andersson.
Marcus Wallenberg.
Photo: Alexander Mahmoud
Where do you see the greatest benefit?
– Probably in precision medicine and diagnosis: to be able to find a disease before it breaks out or to be able to treat it in real time, where you see how a patient responds directly to a medicine.
Does this seem like it could lead to ethical discussions?
– Absolutely. We have set aside $ 35 million in the project to study the consequences and challenges of data-driven life sciences.
Also read: Maria Gunther: How you evaluate science
