Olga Göransson, an Assistant Professor at the University of Lund, Sweden, and Kei Sakamoto, Programme Leader in the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit, have recently been awarded an international collaboration grant from the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education. This grant is aimed at helping promising young researchers in Sweden to build international collaborations with prominent young scientists in other countries. In order to initiate their collaboration, Olga, Kei and the members of their research groups held a research retreat on November 10th in the Scottish Highlands, some 45 miles north of the MRC-PPU. Since Olga and Kei are both interested in the metabolic phenotyping of mouse models for insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, they also invited Mirela Delibegovic and her team at the University of Aberdeen who are studying the function of protein-tyrosine phosphatases in regulating insulin and leptin signaling pathways and how deregulation of these pathways leads to the development of diseases such as type 2 diabetes and obesity.

Olga and Kei met during the period 2003-2006, when they were both postdoctoral fellows in Dario Alessi's laboratory in the MRC-PPU and they started to run their own independent research groups at about the same time. Mirela carried out her PhD in the MRC-PPU in Tricia Cohen's laboratory (1999-2003), and after postdoctoral training in Benjamin Neel's laboratory at Harvard Medical School, started her own laboratory at Aberdeen, 70 miles north-east of Dundee.

The grant is for three years and will be used to accelerate research collaborations between Olga and Kei's groups and also to provide an opportunity for students and postdoctoral researchers in their groups to visit each other's laboratories and learn new techniques. Emma Henriksson, a PhD student in Olga's group, will join Kei's team from January 2010 for 4 months.