Jakob Stokholm
MD, PhD, Professor
Jakob is leading the Microbiome Group at COPSAC and supervisor for several PhD students and postdocs.
Jakob Stokholm’s research area can be described as clinical translational research combining basic research methodologies and bioinformatics approaches mainly from the microbiology field with clinical data from birth cohort studies. The research has especially contributed to the understanding of how the microbiome in pregnancy and early life is shaped and affected by factors such as antibiotics and delivery mode, and whether these factors as well as the microbiome and virome development and maturation in early life can change the risk of asthma and allergy. This is the key focus for his current research, seeking to bridge the gap between clinical and basic research by adding mechanistic insight to observational findings.
It is his ambition to contribute to future research and to make a difference for pediatric patients by improving prevention and treatment of childhood-onset disease. Here, research in the early life microbiome holds great promise, as the child from birth is almost free of microbes and during the microbial maturation process that is ongoing in the first years of life, the microbiome can be modulated, hopefully to prevent disease. Jakob Stokholm wants to take his findings back to the children through clinical trials. Now he is leading the RestoreGut trial, where cesarean delivered children are randomised to receive a fecal microbiota transplantation, a fecal virome transplantation or a placebo treatment to restore their initial microbiome.
Jakob has received several prestigious awards for his research: Apart from poster and presentation awards. In 2013, he received the Danish Birgit & Svend Igor Pock-Steen Award, in 2015 he received the American Thrasher Research Fund Early Career Award and in 2015, the Danish Sapere Aude: DFF – Research Talent. In 2018, he received the Danish DFF Sapere Aude starting grant (Research Leader) for performing a translational project on understanding the maturation of the gut microbiome in early life to prevent asthma. In 2023 he received the ERC Consolidator Grant for his project RestoreGut.
Jakob Stokholm received his medical degree in 2006, and defended his PhD thesis at COPSAC in collaboration with Næstved Hospital in 2012. He worked as a visiting postdoc in the lab of Martin Blaser, Human Microbiome Program, NYU, New York, in 2015-2016, became Associate Professor in 2020, and with support from Børnelungefonden has been full Professor of Human Microbiome and Health since 2025 in a joint position between COPSAC and Department of Food Science, University of Copenhagen.
