Research

Research is therefore a priority for all of Statens Serum Institut’s core areas, and SSI is one of Denmark’s largest contributors to the field of health research.

Research is an integral part of SSI’s infectious disease preparedness and congenital disease detection programs. Central research themes in both focus areas revolve around the development and implementation of the state-of-the-art diagnostic methods.
Infectious disease preparedness activities also encompass research on emerging diseases (e.g. SARS), antibiotic resistance, zoonoses (infections passed between animals and humans), respiratory tract infections (e.g. influenza), sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis, foodborne illness, vaccine-preventable illnesses, and the adherence to and efficacy of Denmark’s national vaccination programmes.

SSI has several world-class basic research environments:

• Epidemiologic research, which focuses on understanding disease incidence and patterns of disease in the Danish population, identifying risk factors for disease, investigating factors that influence disease prognosis, and studying the consequences of disease for health later in life.
• Vaccine research, which focuses on immunologic responses to infection and both basic and translational vaccine research. SSI’s vaccine research is unique in that it covers the whole span from hypothesis generation and basic research to vaccines in clinical use. The vaccine research program is also an integral part of SSI’s core mission with respect to vaccine preparedness and supply.
• Research in congenital disorders, which includes customized genetic and biochemical analyses of blood samples from the newborn. The research aims to identify new disease biomarkers and achieve new insight in the biology and progression of disease. The blood specimen that we mainly analyse are dried blood on filter paper (Guthrie cards), which are taken shortly after birth to screen for congenital disorders.

The Danish National Biobank is a unique part of Denmark’s national research infrastructure that supports Danish research in the health sciences. In 2018, the biobank housed approximately 9 million biological samples and a biobank register covering approximately 25 million Danish samples.