About us
We turn cancer defects into novel treatments.
Meny
We turn cancer defects into novel treatments.
The Helleday laboratory started in 2000 at the University of Sheffield (UK), with a branch also at Stockholm University (Sweden). In 2007, the Sheffield group moved to University of Oxford to be a part in building up a new MRC-CRUK Institute. In Stockholm, the lab was also one of the first labs on site at the newly founded SciLifeLab in 2011, and in 2012, the lab consolidated at Karolinska Institutet (joined with SciLifeLab).
The lab re-emerged at the University of Sheffield in 2018 and Prof Helleday remains as guest professor in Sheffield. Over the years the lab has grown from a small team with a few lab members, focusing on understanding DNA damage response (DDR) and repair, to a large lab carrying vast expertise in the DDR, metabolism, medicinal chemistry, disease biology, pharmacology and drug discovery with the ultimate goal to help patients by developing new treatments for cancer and other diseases.
The Helleday laboratories is relocated next to the national drug discovery platforms in SciLifeLab.
The lab has created a foundation to support its research long term, the Helleday foundation, and several companies has been spun out from the lab, most notably Oxcia AB and One-carbon therapeutics AB.
Cancer cells already have altered metabolic activity and a lot of DNA damage compared to normal cells. With specific metabolic or DNA repair inhibitors we force the cancer cell into a trap where they cannot cope with the overload of DNA damage, without harming healthy cells with normal metabolic pathways.
Many diseases have alterations in metabolic pathways often leading to DNA damage that manifest or define the disease. Our strategy is to identify basic mechanisms of proteins involved in metabolism and DNA repair to gain better understanding in disease and also develop small molecule inhibitors to selectively target these proteins as potential therapeutics. We reach our goal through open innovation and through a foundation, securing the future for our science and ensuring long term benefit to mankind.
The Helleday Foundation is a charitable, nonprofit foundation based in Sweden with the purpose to support and reward internationally valuable scientific research within the field of medicine. Particular focus is put on the development of new treatment therapies from a biological perspective. Central for new treatment therapies is that they are to be brought to patients in a highly cost-effective manner in a near patient environment with high academic integrity.