News archive

Vaccination protects against severe COVID-19 but not against infection. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Danderyd Hospital now show that protection against infection with the new omicron variants is linked to mucosal IgA antibodies, which are not induced by vaccination. These are the findings of two studies recently published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, and The Lancet Microbe, and could explain the limited protection by currently available vaccines against infection.

Karolinska University Hospital's Director Björn Zoëga and Karolinska Institutet's President Annika Östman Wernerson have signed an agreement to establish a joint center for advanced cell, gene and tissue therapies.

Online cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) shows promising effects on quality of life, as well as reduced healthcare consumption for patients with paroxysmal (i.e., intermittent) symptomatic atrial fibrillation, according to a new study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. According to the researchers, this is the world's first randomized controlled trial of CBT for patients with atrial fibrillation (AF).

The Virus Tech Core Facility has acquired the plasmids necessary for the production of the new variations of the AAV9 pseudotype viruses.

We have developed a lenti/retroviral titration method measuring transducing units, or number of proviral copies in the infected cells.

KI researcher Yihai Cao and his research group at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, have defined a new biomarker for predicting drug resistance of antiangiogenic therapy for the treatment of various cancers. The study is published in PNAS.

For the eleventh time, the International Week has been arranged by the international team of occupational therapy in collaboration with international partners. It all started in 2012 with Uganda through the Linnaeus-Palme program.

Each year, the Swedish Brain Foundation supports qualified research on the brain and other nervous systems, as well as diseases, injuries, and disabilities throughout the nervous system. Andrea Carmine Belin runs one of the 44 research projects at Karolinska Institutet that have been awarded this year's research grant from the Swedish Brain Foundation.

We are excited to announce that we are in the process of acquiring a new sorter for our Flow Cytometry Core Facility at Biomedicum. This acquisition aims to expand our sorting capacity, allowing us to better accommodate the needs of our researchers.

We are thrilled to announce the latest additions to our core facility. We have recently acquired two Sony ID7000 spectral analyzers, Alice and Howard. These analyzers are equipped with advanced features, including five lasers and an array of 147 detectors, enabling high-resolution spectral analysis.

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a common hormone disorder in women. Studies have shown that the change in hormones is accompanied by variations in immunological B cells. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now established that the syndrome is not caused by B cells, the role of which remains unclear. The study is published in eLife.

Solmaz Yazdani, Unit of Integrative Epidemiology at the Institute of Environmental Medicine (IMM)

Global Child Health and Sustainable Development Goals team members Olivia Biermann and Mariam Claeson are commissioners on the second Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing. Together they co-lead the commission’s workstream on the political economy of adolescent mental health and well-being. Last month, May 9-11, they visited Nairobi, Kenya for a midterm meeting to present and discuss the progress of the workstreams of the commission.

On behalf of the Public Health Agency of Sweden, researchers at IMM have produced the document "Expert opinion on heated tobacco products”.

KI researchers Georgios Sotiriou and Haipeng Li at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology have developed an inexpensive, fast, and reproducible manufacturing process of nanosensors for food safety diagnostics. A new study in Chemical Engineering Journal shows that the sensors can detect pesticides in fresh orange juice.

Hearing loss can lead to anxiety, sadness and depression. Gerhard Andersson has been researching a treatment for those who have difficulty accepting hearing loss.

Mikael Wiehe's hearing loss affects both himself and those around him. Nowadays, he prefers to perform alone, and restaurant visits only work if the sound environment is right. This article is part of an in-depth feature from KI's popular science magazine Medicinsk Vetenskap.

At its meeting of 22 June, the government made the decision to stop all grants disbursed by the Swedish Research Council itemised as development research, effectively pulling the plug on a great deal of planned research in the field. Researchers in the sector have protested publicly against the decision, which has also been condemned by KI president Annika Östman Wernerson.

Ida Bäckström suddenly lost her hearing - first in the right ear and then in the left. Now she hears with the help of cochlear implants. This article is part of an in-depth feature from KI's popular science magazine Medicinsk Vetenskap.

Pernilla Videhult Pierre researches how different substances can damage hearing - or provide protection in emergency situations. This article is part of an in-depth feature from KI's popular science magazine Medicinsk Vetenskap.

Some children are born with hearing loss in only one ear. What to do then? The issue is more difficult than one might think.

One billion young people risk hearing loss in the future if they continue to listen to their headphones at too high a volume. To develop treatments, researchers need to solve the mysteries of the cochlea - well hidden in the inner ear, a pea-sized organ embedded in bone a few centimeters inside the outer ear.

The summer heat is here and with it questions about how we should handle high temperatures and what we should do to feel well in the heat. Cardiologist Petter Ljungman, associate professor at the Institute for Environmental Medicine and expert coordinator at the Centre for Health Crises, answers questions about health and heat.

Global Disaster Medicine - Health Needs and Responses is part of a consortium led by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, called IPA Care, that aims to address the needs of countries on Western Balkan, along with Turkey, to strengthen their ability to prevent risks related to earthquakes and other health emergencies.

A groundbreaking study published in Nature Cardiovascular Research uncovers the crucial role of the AmotL2 protein in connecting mechanical forces to endothelial cell integrity and alignment. This discovery sheds light on junctional mechanotransduction and its implications for vascular disease, including abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA). Importantly, the study reveals gender differences, with males showing a higher incidence of AAA.

An international team of researchers has developed a new method to deliver drugs into the inner ear, according to a new study in Science Translational Medicine. The discovery was possible by harnessing the natural flow of fluids in the brain and employing a little-understood backdoor into the cochlea. When combined to deliver a gene therapy that repairs inner ear hair cells, the researchers were able to restore hearing in deaf mice.

A new study in Nature by an international team including researchers at Karolinska Institutet has identified the first genetic variant associated with disease severity in multiple sclerosis. The finding opens the door to the development of treatments that fight disease progression – a great unmet need facing people with MS.

Congratulations to Samer Yammine at the Department of learning, informatics, management and ethics (LIME), who received the award "Male entrepreneurship educator of the year", an award included in The Triple E Awards!

The Rolf Zetterström prize for the best thesis in pediatrics 2022 goes to Stavroula Anastasopoulou who completed her dissertation at the Department of Women's and Children's Health last November. Her research contributes to improved treatment and lack of late effects for children and adolescents affected by acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Fredrik Pleijel, researcher in marine biology at the Department of Marine Sciences, Gothenburg University, is awarded the 2023 Lennart Nilsson Award for his ability to depict and make visible the beauty of marine life. “I'm just a photographer who happened to be fascinated by the animals in the sea,” says Fredrik Pleijel.

To bring Sweden’s presidency of the EU to a close, the government is arranging a European Life Science conference to be held at Karolinska Institutet’s Aula Medica on 26–27 June. The theme of the conference is precision medicine, and KI – along with Karolinska University Hospital – has helped to draw up the programme.

The Department of Dental Medicine continues to develop clinical researchers through freestanding courses at advanced level leading to either a master's degree (120 credits) in odontology or a master's degree (60 credits) in oral health or dental technology.

Assistant Professor Maurice Michel has received the Eppendorf Award for Young European Investigators 2023 for his research on artificial functions of DNA repair enzymes.

Five researchers at Karolinska Institutet are awarded 30 million Swedish kronor from the Swedish Research Council (VR) to establish a so-called centre of excellence for further development of cell-based cancer treatments. The funds will be distributed over five years, with the potential for another five years of funding after evaluation.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have identified a group of nerve cells in the mouse brain that are involved in creating negative emotional states and chronic stress. The neurons, which have been mapped with a combination of advanced techniques, also have receptors for oestrogen, which could explain why women as a group are more sensitive to stress than men. The study is published in Nature Neuroscience.

Federico Iovino and his lab members have been awarded with a grant from the ItsME Foundation to enable their research on the prevention of neuronal damage caused by bacterial infections. The ItsME Foundation was founded in 2019 by Jur Deitmers and has its base in The Netherlands, with the goal to fight Meningitis and Encephalitis.

From June 26 to August 11, KI Housing will have limited staff on duty which will have an impact on our service. During this period, urgent questions and maintenance issues will be prioritized and it may take some time before we get back to you.

A team of researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Yale School of Medicine wanted to know what happens to mosaic skin upon injury. Do simple wounds or surgery enhance the skin cancer risk by expanding mutated cells even more as generally believed? The surprising answer is no, according to newly published study in Nature.

In the middle of May, around 30 students and three teachers from The School of Health Sciences, Western University, Ontario, Canada, visited the study programmes in health care sciences at NVS. This is part of a collaboration that started on a smaller scale in 2018, and after a short break during the pandemic is back on track since last year.

In June 2023 representatives from Karolinska Institutet visited Washington DC and New York City in the US. Connected to several collaborations important to KI and with strategic plans to increase alumni activity in the US, the visit included a SIREUS event hosted at the House of Sweden in DC, as well as two planned alumni events in DC and New York, along with valuable alumni visits to Rockefeller University and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Almost a hundred experts from 27 countries took part in a hackathon on June 17–18 to identify diseases in 14 patients lacking diagnoses. “Four of them have now received an answer and we’re confident that more are to come,” says professor and consultant Ann Nordgren, who was one of the organizers of the event.

A watercolour painting, anatomical artwork or a whole house dedicated to the body. When scientists turn to art, science takes on new forms.

SFO-V regularly announces calls for partial financing of sabbaticals within health care sciences. This past spring, Susan Guidetti, professor at the Division of Occupational Therapy and Eric Asaba, docent and senior lecturer at the Division of Occupational Therapy were granted funding for sabbaticals in Ugandan and USA, respectively.

One of our partner universities, the City University of London, came to visit KI and KI Housing offered them guided tours of our accommodation area “KI Residence Flemingsberg”.

In a nationwide Swedish study of more than 85,000 patients with biopsy-confirmed inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), researchers from Karolinska Institutet and Örebro University (Sweden) observed that IBD patients had an increased risk of stroke, especially of ischaemic events, compared to the general population. The results are published in Neurology.

Many men in northern Europe over the age of 60 suffer from the so-called Viking disease, which means that the fingers lock in a bent position. Now researchers at Karolinska Institutet, together with colleagues, have used data from over 7,000 affected individuals to look for genetic risk factors for the disease. The findings, which have been published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, show that three of the strongest risk factors are inherited from Neanderthals.

PROMINENT Project, which was officially launched today, will Enhance Diagnosis and Treatment of Neurodegenerative Diseases, Improving Patients' Lives Across Europe.

The European Health Conference and Exhibition HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) 23 was held on the 7-9 June, 2023 in Lisbon.

Assistant professor Marcus Buggert at Karolinska Institutet is awarded Anders Jahre's prize for young researchers 2023 and 400.000 NOK.

A new DNA-based COVID-19 vaccine is now being tested for the first time on healthy volunteers at Karolinska University Hospital. The vaccine has been developed at Karolinska Institutet and target multiple parts of the virus, making it less vulnerable to mutated strains and potentially effective against new variants.