Jenny Mjösberg awarded this year’s Heart-Lung Foundation grand research grant
Some 40,000 Swedes live with severe asthma, a disease that causes considerable suffering. Thanks to grants from the Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation, KI researcher Jenny Mjösberg has discovered a specific cell that is thought to play a major part in non-allergic asthma. Further examination of these cells can help to optimise the use of drugs and reduce suffering for people with severe asthma. She has now been awarded the Heart-Lung Foundation’s grand research grant to continue her research.
“Many people in Sweden live with severe asthma but there’s no cure for it. Jenny Mjösberg’s research has the potential to optimise the use of drugs and reduce suffering for these individuals,” says Kristina Sparreljung, secretary general of the Heart-Lung Foundation, in a press release.
Around 800,000 people in Sweden live with asthma, of whom some 40,000 suffer from a severe form of the disease. Globally, this figure is around 16 million.
Given the considerable suffering that severe asthma causes, scientists need to learn much more about the disease and improve its treatment.
Jenny Mjösberg, professor at Karolinska Institutet, has now been awarded the 2024 Heart-Lung Foundation grand research grant of SEK 15 million to continue her studies of unique cell findings.
“My research group has made exciting discoveries in the lungs’ lymphocyte system concerning, amongst other things, what are known as type 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILCs), which, along with T cells, are thought to play a major part in non-allergic asthma,” says Professor Mjösberg at the Department of Medicine, Karolinska Institutet (Huddinge).
Through established collaborations with clinical researchers at the Severe Asthma Centre at Karolinska University Hospital (KSAC), her research group will be mapping white blood cells in unique lung tissue samples from people with severe asthma.
The research group will be examining tissue samples from people with severe asthma to identify disease-related lymphocytes, the function of which they will proceed to study in the laboratory.
The presence of these lymphocytes will be assayed in larger groups of patients with severe asthma, both before and during treatment with biological drugs.
About the Heart-Lung Foundation’s grand research grant
The Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation’s grand research grant is worth SEK 15 million over three years, making it the single largest grant in Sweden in heart and lung research.
The aim of the grant is to enable critical breakthroughs within an important research field of great significance to these patients.
The grant was created in 2008, and since 2012 has been presented by the honorary chairperson of the Heart-Lung Foundation, HRH Prince Daniel.
Source: The Heart-Lung Foundation