News archive

Klas Kärre, member of the Nobel Committee and MTC research group leader comments on the on the life-changing possibilities of this year’s Nobel Prize in an interview with freelance journalist Lotta Fredholm.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine recognizes the discovery that it is possible to treat cancer by inhibiting the brakes on the immune system. Behind their discovery lies a bold idea and eager basic research, which has led to an entirely new principle for cancer therapy and new medicines that have already been approved. Many factors contribute to rapid developments in this field—in particular, current research at Karolinska Institutet.

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have identified four types of neurons in the peripheral auditory system, three of which are new to science. The analysis of these cells can lead to new therapies for various kinds of hearing disorders, such as tinnitus and age-related hearing loss. The study is published in Nature Communications.

In recent years access to drugs and vaccines has been increasing in many African countries, but the systems for monitoring treatment effects and reporting side-effects require further development. Karolinska Institutet will now lead an international collaboration project on pharmacovigilance – drugs safety – in four countries in East Africa.

Procome a partner in an Erasmus educational program for implementation science.

The research group Procome receives research funding from FORTE for a three year project investigating how evidence-based interventions can give the best value for service users. It’s a collaboration with the local the R&D units (FoU Nordväst,FoU nordostoch FOU nu) and social service organizations.

Katja Petzold has received the Ampere prize for Young Investigators during the EUROMAR conference in Nantes, France. The prize of 3,000 EUR was given in recognition of her achievements in using solution-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) for the study the molecular mechanism of RNA function.

As soon as a baby is born, its immune system starts to change dramatically in response to the bacteria, viruses and so forth in its new environment, a phenomenon that is common to all babies, researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden write in a paper published in Cell. The study was made possible using new techniques of immune cell analysis.

Successful pathogenic strains of pneumococci have two proteins that, owing to their location on the surface of the bacteria, enhance their survival and ability to cause disease, a study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in Nature Communications, reports.

Failure to generate neutrophils in the bone marrow leads to devastating bacterial and fungal infections. Researchers from Karolinska Institutet have discovered a new pathway to elevate the number of tissue neutrophils by activating the cell cytoskeleton. The study is published in Journal of Clinical Investigation.