MDL becomes MOMA

MOMA emerged from the Molecular Diagnostic  Laboratory (MDL) in 2008.

MDL was founded in 1997 by MD Torben Falck Ørntoft - at that time counting just four staff members - as a division of the Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Aarhus University Hospital Skejby.

MOMA's staff has since grown to more than 170 members including six Professors, consultants, medical doctors, researchers, clinical academics, bioinformaticians, medical technologists and students.

In 2020 the current Head of Department, Chief physician Ole Halfdan Larsen joined MOMA, in 2021 the Leading Academic Anne Charlotte Jäger became part of the department management, which is completed by the Leading Research Professor.

Service provider

MDL and MOMA have been providing genetical analyses to clinicians since 1996.

In 2000, the spin-out company Aros Applied Biotechnology A/S was founded, dedicated to microarrays and other biotechnological services. Aros joined Eurofins in 2013.

From 2003 to 2016 MOMA's Core Center for Microarrays has provided its services. It was associated with the Institute for Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University.

A NGS Core Center was established in January 2012 as a collaboration between Aarhus University Hospital, The Faculty of Health at Aarhus University and scientists at MOMA, providing sequencing services to researchers.

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The cell authentication service IdentiCell using STR profiling was the Nordic provider from 2012 to 2022.

Since 2013 MOMA has provided common NGS sequencing services (FNE) to all clinical departments at Aarhus University Hospital.

In 2019 MOMA became Whole Genome Sequencing Center West for The National Genome Center Denmark as part of the national strategy for personalized medicine.

From 2020 MOMA started contributing to the regional data support facility CONNECT, which is an interdisciplinary and inter-organizational collaboration  between Region Central Jutland, Aarhus University Hospital and Aarhus  University.

The Single Cell Core Center at MOMA, part of the The Danish Single Cell Examination Platform CellX started off in 2002.

Research groups and ctDNA center

In 2005, research groups in bladder, colon and prostate cancer lead by senior researchers were founded, while in 2010 the first bioinformatic group was established by Jakob Skou Pedersen.

In 2012 the medical research group headed by Prof. Claus Gravholt was established.

In 2015 and 2018 two additional bioinformatic research groups headed by Søren Besenbacher and Nikolai Birkbak were founded.

The Danish National  Center for Circulating Tumor DNA Guided Cancer Treatment was founded in 2020 with two Professors from MOMA as center directors.

In 2023 the renal cancer research group, headed by Iben Lyskjær Heimann was established.