News archive

Jiří Bártek, Professor of Cancer Biology at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics researches the checkpoint systems that monitor cell division in our bodies. These systems are there to ensure that division occurs at the correct pace and to check the quality of DNA replication. Flaws in these controls can lead to cancer and affect ageing and immunity.

Our sensitivity to harmful substances is determined by our genes. But such substances can also reprogram our DNA, so called epigenetic changes, in response to the environment. Karin Broberg, Professor of Environmental Medicine specialising in Genetics and Epigenetics at the Institute of Environmental Medicine, researches these links between heredity and environment.

Karolinska Institutet's yearly installation ceremony was held Thursday October 15, 2015, at which new professors, adjunct professors, visiting professors and, not least, foreign adjunct professors were presented. This year's academic prizes and awards were also announced.

Schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis cause terrible human suffering at a considerable cost to the health services. Christina Dalman's, Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology at the Department of Public Health Science, work involves identifying the risk factors in order to understand how these conditions develop with a view to improving methods of therapy and prevention.

Chronic pain affects large groups of patients and is very costly in terms of human suffering and medical resources. Eva Kosek, Professor of Clinical Pain Research specialising in Musculoskeletal Pain at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, researches the causes of chronic pain in the hope that her work will one day lead to new, more efficacious treatments.

Olli Kallioniemi, Professor of Molecular Precision Medicine, wants to see today’s great life-science advances put to much swifter clinical use. Both as a professor and as the new director of SciLifeLab he is interested in new translational collaborations and the molecular classification of diseases.

Lisa Juntti-Berggren is Professor of Experimental Medicine at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery and researches on diabetes, especially apolipoprotein CIII. She aims to find new drugs for the prevention and treatment of the disease.

Patrick Sullivan, Professor of Psychiatric Genetics at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, is engaged in major international research collaborations to understand the genetics and biology of schizophrenia. He currently divides his time between the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA, and Karolinska Institutet.

Bertrand Joseph, Professor of Molecular Cancer Biology specialising in Cell Death at the Institute of Environmental Medicine, researches signals at cellular level that determine if cells are to die or not. His work is relevant for many diseases, such as neurodegenerative diseases and cancer, in which cells take the wrong decision in this choice between life and death.

Karin Loré, Professor of Vaccination Immunology specialising in Innate Immunity at the Department of Medicine, Solna, studies how the immune system responds to vaccination and how protective responses to infectious diseases are established. In particular, she focuses on how immune-stimulating substances – vaccine adjuvants – can induce stronger responses which is important for the development of vaccines to infections like hiv/aids and malaria.

Should we avoid fatty fish because it contains PCB – or eat it because it contains omega-3? Agneta Åkesson, Professor of Epidemiology specialising in Nutrition and Toxicology at the Institute of Environmental Medicine, combines several research fields in order to piece together a picture of how factors such as diet and lifestyle affect our health.

Single cell analysis enables scientists to do what was once thought impossible: study gene activity in an individual cell. Sten Linnarsson, Professor of Molecular System Biology specialising in Transcriptomics at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, uses the technique to identify cell types in the brain and to understand the systems that regulate our cells types in both healthy and cancerous tissue.

Janne Lehtiö, Professor of Medical Proteomics at the Department of Oncology-Pathology, uses mass spectrometry to study proteomes and their function to understand how proteins change as cancer develops. One of his objectives is to find reliable biomarkers that can help doctors to choose the most effective medication for each patient.

Yvonne Wengström, Professor of Nursing at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, researches how care can support patients’ symptom burden and well-being during treatment for cancer; this she does in dialogue with the patients themselves.

As a doctoral student, Per Uhlén, Professor of Dynamic Imaging of Intracellular Signalling at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, discovered that the calcium concentration in cells can fluctuate at a certain frequency, roughly like a radio signal. He is now trying to understand the meaning of these signals for the healthy and diseased body.

Myocardial infarction in people with healthy coronary arteries is far more common than once thought. Much remains unknown about the causes, diagnosis and treatment of these infarctions, but Per Tornvall, Professor of Cardiology at the Department of Clinical Research and Education, Södersjukhuset hopes to put this right.

Carol Tishelman is an experienced KI professor although she has been recently appointed as Professor of Innovative Care at the Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics, with a newly established professorial chair funded by an endowment. She is active in research into how people experience sickness and health care – at present focusing particularly on end-of-life care.

In a newly published study, researchers at Karolinska Institutet show that the shortening of the telomeres – the caps at each end of the chromosomes in our cells – can be linked statistically to the active mechanism responsible for Alzheimer’s disease.

Sten Eirik Waelgaard Jacobsen, Professor of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge, and the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, researches how bone marrow stem cells produce blood cells. His research involves exploring the mechanisms and regulation of healthy blood formation and the causes of diseases of the blood, such as leukaemia.

Gert Helgesson, Professor of Medical Ethics at the Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics, researches scientific and medical ethics. The issues he interrogates concern everything from how researchers present their data to the difficult decisions doctors must make on life and death.

The 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar for having mapped, at a molecular level, how cells repair damaged DNA and safeguard the genetic information. Tomas Lindahl made these crucial discoveries, for which he is now being rewarded, at Karolinska Institutet.