Johan Björkegren new professor at MedH

Congratulations on your professorship! What does this title mean to you?

The professorship at Karolinska Institutet is a critical milestone, one that I believe will be essential for me to successfully compete for major grants in Sweden and EU.

What is your role at MedH?

My role is to anchor systems medicine at MedH. Broadly, this means using multi-omics data to map how specific molecular functions connect not only within organs but also between them. A major consequence of this approach is that I can drive collaborations across traditional research boundaries—often helping colleagues validate molecular discoveries made in model systems by bringing a human perspective to them. With this professorship, I also look forward to establishing systems medicine in the teaching programs at KI and MedH.

Tell us about your research group?

Currently my research team consists of three interconnected groups. I maintain active grants and a team at Mount Sinai in New York, which facilitates numerous US-based collaborations.

Given my Estonian heritage, I am particularly proud of our group in Tartu, which serves as the clinical hub for patient recruitment in the STARNET study (Stockholm-Tartu Atherosclerosis Reverse Network Engineering Task).

Here at KI, our team is growing. Dr. Husain Talukdar serves as our Staff Bioinformatician, working alongside Post-doc Dr. Katyayani Sukhavasi. We are also excited to have Ville Du Reitz, who is completing his medical degree this autumn before joining us as a PhD student, and Pontus Rydén, a new Master student from the Data Science program at KTH.

What is the group focusing on right now?

While our core focus remains on the relationship between atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and inflammatory, and metabolic disorders, we are actively expanding our network models to address other complex conditions, such as kidney disease.

Our primary asset is the STARNET study, which is a globally unique resource. Over the years, we have generated extensive multi-omics data—at both the tissue and, more recently, the single-cell level. Uniquely, this covers not just the vascular bed but also parallel samples from major metabolic organs (liver, skeletal muscle, and two types of adipose tissue) in nearly 2,000 patients.

Leveraging this unparalleled depth and scale, our overall goal is to map the 'system' of biological networks that connects molecular functions and signaling pathways within and between tissues. We believe establishing this systems medicine view is the key to unlocking the true potential of precision medicine.

What do you want to achieve with your research?

My overall goal is to prevent sudden cardiac events like heart attacks and strokes through earlier, more precise diagnosis. Beyond detection, I want to drive the development of a new generation of therapeutics. Instead of treating symptoms, our aim is to identify treatments that modify the underlying biological networks in diseased tissues—effectively 're-programming' them back to a healthy physiological state.