2025 Anders Jahre Award goes to two KI researchers
The prestigious Nordic Anders Jahre Award for 2025 goes this year to two researchers at Karolinska Institutet. Professor Sten Eirik Wælgaard Jacobsen is to receive the Anders Jahre Award for Medical Research for his work on normal and leukemic blood stem cells. William Nyberg is honoured with the Anders Jahre Award for Young Researchers for his work on the development of T-cell immunotherapy for cancer.
Professor Sten Eirik Jacobsen is to receive the 2025 Anders Jahre Award for Medical Research for his pioneering studies on blood-forming stem cells.
The award for junior researchers goes jointly to William Nyberg, assistant professor at KI, for his contributions to the development of T-cell immunotherapy for cancer, and Thomas McWilliams of Helsinki University. The awards will be presented at a ceremony on 6 November at Oslo University.
“The Anders Jahre medical awards honour basic research that pushes the boundaries of knowledge. I congratulate all the prize-winners and thank them for their great efforts, says Svein Stølen, rector of Oslo University. “They have contributed to better insights that have already had impact on the treatment of disease.”
Sten Eirik Wælgaard Jacobsen studied medicine and earned his PhD at the University of Bergen, and has led research centres and research groups at the universities of Lund and Oxford. For the past ten years, he has spent most of his time at Karolinska Institutet.
Groundbreaking insights into blood-forming stem cells
His research has revealed important aspects of how blood stem cells in the bone marrow produce the millions of new blood cells that need to be formed every second – and how mutations in normal stem cells can turn them into leukaemic stem cells.
“I am grateful and humbled having been selected as this year’s recipient of Anders Jahre Award,” says Sten Eirik Wælgaard Jacobsen, professor at the Department of Medicine in Huddinge and the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at KI, and at the Center of Haematology, Karolinska University Hospital. “I feel a high level of gratitude towards the essential contributions from all outstanding mentors, lab members, and collaborators who I have had the privilege of working closely with. Honoring the pursuit of fundamental research, this award also reminds me about the critical moment of history we are living in, when not only academic freedom but also other fundamental pillars of our democracy are under massive attack.”
He continues: “This threat is very real also in our Nordic democracies, and we have entered a fact-resistant time when in addition to continuing our pursuit of important research questions, more will be expected from us as knowledge and fact-based researchers and institutions.”
Professor Jacobsen’s discoveries have redrawn the map of how different blood cells are produced from stem cells and revealed the existence of different types of blood-forming stem cells.
His research group has conducted detailed studies on mice and humans, often at single-cell level. Many of their results can be of significance to future strategies for improving therapeutic outcomes for blood cancer and cancer in general.
Award for junior researchers
William Nyberg is recognised for having developed effective tools that instruct T-cells to attack and kill cancer cells. The method was developed in mouse models but has since been adapted for use in humans.
“I’m very honoured to receive the award,” says William Nyberg, researcher at the Center for Haematology and Regenerative Medicine in Huddinge, KI. “Cell therapies for cancer have become increasingly effective, but their availability remained an issue. Our multidisciplinary work have revealed that new technologies and methods can improve these treatments and potentially make them available to all patients. I’m grateful to my mentors and partners – the award is confirmation of how important it is to keep pushing the boundaries of science and medicine.”
William Nyberg shares the award with Dr Thomas McWilliams at Helsinki University, who is to receive it for his work on how autophagy – the natural process of cellular degradation and recycling – operates in brain cells.