News archive

The KI Housing office is closed on Monday, May 1, due to Public holidays. If you have any urgent maintenance issues when the office is closed, we ask you to use the on-call service for your area.

On April 26 it has been seven years since Ahmadreza Djalali, a Swedish citizen who received his PhD in disaster medicine at Karolinska Institutet, was arrested during a visit in Iran. Karolinska Institutet and The Human Rights Committee of Sweden’s Scientific and Literary Academies now urge in an open letter to Sweden’s prime minister, foreign minister and education minister to try all means possible to ensure the release of Djalali.

The European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Rising Star Award honours two Early Career Scientists annually, whose research in applied and translational neuroscience has the potential to advance the science, treatment and prevention of brain disorders.

Janica Kallonen at the research group Thoracic Surgery, the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, defended her thesis "Long-term follow-up after surgery for chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension" on May 5th, 2023.
Main Supervisor: Ulrik Sartipy.

Routine diagnostic analyses of mutations in cell-free DNA in patients with metastatic prostate cancer are now possible for the first time in Sweden. The test has been developed by researchers at Karolinska Institutet, and Karolinska University Hospital is now offering the analysis to hospitals around the Nordic region, giving more patients with certain gene mutations access to the cancer treatment they need.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer affecting women and many women are being treated to prevent the cancer from returning, for example with adjuvant hormone therapy. This therapy is prescribed as a once-a-day pill for estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer patients (around 80% of all cases) for a duration of at least five years.

Antti Siika at the Vascular Surgery research group, Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, will defend his thesis "Biomechanical and Morphological Aspects of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Growth and Rupture" on April 28th, 2023.

Main Supervisor is Joy Roy.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have mapped how cells in the human spinal cord are formed in the embryo and what genes control the process. Their findings can give rise to new knowledge on how injury to and diseases of the spinal cord arise and how they can be treated. The study has been published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Kristina Jonsson and Lina Jonnerhag both work as teaching assistants at the Division of Physiotherapy, besides being active second year students at the Study Programme in Physiotherapy. With the help of assistants, teachers get great support in teaching large classes, often between 40 – 80 students.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have investigated how preterm birth and foetal growth are related to the risk of atrial fibrillation up to middle-age. The study, which is published in JAMA Pediatrics, shows that being born preterm or large for gestational age was associated with increased risks of atrial fibrillation later in life. Being small for gestational age at birth was only associated with an increased risk of atrial fibrillation up to the age of 18.

The risk of developing lymphoma is slightly elevated in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and has increased in recent years in patients with Crohn’s disease, report researchers from Karolinska Institutet in a study published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. The researchers could see a risk increase in patients taking modern IBD drugs and, less so, in patients not on such drugs, indicating that the lymphoma risk could be affected by both the medication and the disease activity itself.

The 5D Heart Patch Project, led by Prof Kenneth Chien, has identified human ventricular progenitor (HVP) cells that can create self-assembling heart grafts in vivo. The research has the potential to offer hope to millions of people suffering from heart failure.

A hitherto unknown mechanism for DNA folding is described in a study in Nature published by researchers from Karolinska Institutet and the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics. Their findings provide new insights into chromosomal processes that are vital to both normal development and to prevent disease.

Close on 500 colleagues in the cancer field from Karolinska University Hospital and Karolinska Institutet gathered in Aula Medica during this year’s Karolinska CCC conference on 30–31 March. Also attending were Sahlgrenska CCC and Skåne CCC.

A new Swedish biobank act comes into force on July 1. It is expected to make it easier for researchers to use biobanks – i.e. collections of samples of human and fetal tissue – and to collaborate.

In a Swedish systematic review published in Acta Paediatrica, researchers from Karolinska Institutet, University of Gothenburg, Umeå University, and the Swedish agency for health technology assessment and assessment of social services, mapped the current knowledge of hormonal treatment in youths <18 years with gender dysphoria.

University of Rwanda and the Swedish Embassy in Kigali celebrated 20 years of cooperation. At the three day-celebration in Rwanda were representatives from the University of Gothenburg, Chalmers University of Technology, Uppsala University among others. Following the celebration, KTH held a two-day workshop as a kickoff for expanded and deepened cooperation under a new agreement that was signed. Stefan Swartling Peterson and Giulia Gaudenzi report from their trip to Rwanda.

Veronika Sundström is Karolinska Institutet’s new university director as of 17 April. Her job is to lead KI’s central administration consisting of ten offices and over 500 staff. The president, vice-president and university director together comprise the university’s senior management.

Jelena Misic, PhD in Nils-Göran Larsson Group at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics at Karolinska Institutet, has been selected to participate in the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings in June 2023. Jelena studies different aspects of mitochondrial gene expression in mammals.

In a nationwide Swedish study of 207 births to women with an earlier diagnosis of colorectal cancer (CRC), researchers found an increased risk of both maternal and neonatal adverse outcomes. The study was published in eClinicalMedicine and is a collaboration between Washington University in St Louis and Karolinska Institutet.

In a recently published article published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Professor Yihai Cao’s research group at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, charts the information about drug development for the treatment of a number of human diseases by targeting new blood vessel formation.

The newborn care researchers in the team Global Child Health and Sustainable Development Goals, have visited research colleagues at the Phu San Hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam. The visit included meetings with the director and vice-director of Phu San, Dr Nguyen Duy Anh and Dr Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, visits to hospital departments, presentation of ongoing and upcoming research, workshops, simulation trainings and planning of studies including the NeoSpirit project and future Vietnamese PhD candidates.

Predictions are becoming more and more a part of our lives, and they are becoming increasingly useful in medical science as the science evolves. Increased understanding of disease and its treatments allows us to use predictions based on predictive biomarker signatures to optimize treatment outcomes for increasingly specific subject groups.

Early diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease requires reliable and cost-effective screening methods. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now discovered that a type of sugar molecule in blood is associated with the level of tau, a protein that plays a critical role in the development of severe dementia. The study, which is published in Alzheimer's & Dementia, can pave the way for a simple screening procedure able to predict onset ten years in advance.

The risk of developing cardiovascular disease is lower in people with obesity who have a genetic predisposition for high BMI than people with obesity influenced mainly by environmental factors such as lifestyle, researchers from Karolinska Institutet report in eClinicalMedicine.

In an experimental study published in Science Signaling, researchers at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology have studied basic mechanisms for cellular communication along a highly conserved pathway that regulates embryonic development and stem cell regulation. Based on the published data, we have already created new biosensors that present important tools for future drug development efforts and molecular screening.

The group of expert coordinators at the Centre for Health Crises keeps growing. The expert coordinators manage the work that is done within their field of expertise. The latest area of expertise to be added to the Centre is laboratory and diagnostic preparedness, with Jessica Alm as expert coordinator.

Same support, different name. The Student Health Centre at Karolinska Institutet has been renamed Student Wellbeing Centre to better reflect the services they provide.

“We’re delighted, and the VR’s rating gives us even more leverage for our work,” says Anders Gustafsson, former vice president of KI, who has helped lead the work on the national evaluation of the quality of clinical research that has now been published by the Swedish Research Council (VR). The ALF evaluation is based on the agreement that regulates KI’s collaboration with Region Stockholm on medical training, clinical research and care development.

The StratNeuro Start-up Grant is intended to support outstanding Neuroscience researchers at the beginning of their careers, who have received a Vetenskapsrådet (VR) starting grant or a Karolinska Institutet faculty-funded assistant professor grant.

Region Stockholm has been given a high-quality rating by the Swedish Research Council (VR) in its evaluation of the quality of clinical research and how it is transformed into patient and societal benefit. The evaluation is important in many respects, including to the distribution of government ALF (Agreement on Clinical Research and Training) funds.

Acetylcholine regulates blood flow, but the source of blood acetylcholine has been unclear. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have discovered that certain T cells in human blood can produce acetylcholine, which may help regulate blood pressure and inflammation. The study, which is published in PNAS, also demonstrates a possible association between these immune cells in seriously ill patients and the risk of death.

Congratulations to all our newly admitted master students at KI.

Elin Larsson has been appointed to the Scientific and Technical Advisory Group (STAG) to the HRP, i.e. the UNDP/UNFPA/UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction.

Three professors at Karolinska Institutet – Gonçalo Castelo-Branco, Maria Eriksson and Björn Högberg – have been awarded ERC Advanced Grants, one of the most prestigious and competitive EU funding schemes. The funds, totaling more than 8 million euros, will support the use of innovative basic research methods to further our understanding of disease mechanisms and the tiniest building blocks of DNA.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most prominent cause of dementia affecting millions of people worldwide. As the changes in the brain function starts 10-20 years before the clinical onset of Alzheimer’s disease, there is a strong interest in the identification of early markers that can be predictive of future mental health/cognitive decline. This may be something that some KI researchers are on the lookout for. Their latest study is now published in Nature Reviews Neurology.

Mareia Talvitie at the Vascular Surgery research group, Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, will defend her thesis "Abdominal aortic aneurysms : sex and gender disparities in surveillance, treatment and outcome" on March 31st, 2023.
Main Supervisor is Rebecka Hultgren.

A Scandinavian collaboration led by KI researchers shows that of individuals treated in specialist care for major depressive disorder (MDD), many have a severe prognosis, for instance experiencing recurrence, developing other psychiatric disorders, requiring inpatient treatment, and some even dying by suicide. This research was based on 273,000 individuals with MDD in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. The findings are published in Lancet Regional Health Europe.

Thirteen researchers at Karolinska Institutet have been awarded 54.9 million Swedish kronor from the Swedish Cancer Society. The foundation is distributing a total of SEK 124.3 million to 31 cancer researchers in Sweden.

Her involvement in health crises work at KI goes back to her role in one of the expert groups that were formed at KI during the COVID-19 pandemic, which proceeded what became the Centre for Health Crises. Now she is the latest in the group of expert coordinators at the Centre. Hedvig Glans wants to use her clinical and academic experience to improve the Centre’s competence in outbreak preparedness and response to infectious diseases.

The Svedberg prize 2023 is awarded to Simon Elsässer, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics at Karolinska Institutet, for his contributions to our understanding of epigenetic gene regulation.

Training the medical professionals of the future. Facilitating groundbreaking research. And working towards a knowledge-based society enriched by academic freedom. It’s a major undertaking that Annika Östman Wernerson shoulders as Karolinska Institutet’s 24th president. But she won’t be doing it alone – everyone at the university will have to do their bit.

In a new thesis from Karolinska Institutet, the focus was on the use of multiomics data in the discovery of disease signatures.

Blind people are better at sensing their own heartbeats than sighted, shows a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Jagiellonian University in Poland. The study indicates that blindness leads to a heightened ability in feeling signals from the inner body. The findings are published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Samer Yammine at the Department of learning, informatics, management and ethics, LIME, is one of the top five finalists for the award 'Male entrepreneurship educator of the year' by Triple E Awards.

Women with mental illness, neuropsychiatric disability, or substance abuse are less likely to go for gynaecological smear tests for cervical cancer and run more than twice the risk of developing the disease. The findings are presented in Lancet Public Health by researchers from Karolinska Institutet, who stress the importance of proactively approaching these women as a preventative measure against cervical cancer.

How should healthcare providers identify bacteria or other pathogens in the blood of sepsis patients as quickly as possible? Volkan Özenci is focusing on this in his research. This article is part of an in-depth feature from KI's popular science magazine Medicinsk Vetenskap.

Some patients get sepsis because of hospital-acquired infections. A new digital system is now being implemented to find these patients by constantly scanning medical records for signs of sepsis. This article is part of an in-depth feature from KI's popular science magazine Medicinsk Vetenskap.

Funding for the Minor Field Studies program (MFS-program) has been withdrawn due to economic instability and the war in Ukraine. But, says Associate professor Claudia Hanson at the Department of Global Health at Karolinska Institutet, the withdrawal also indicates a moving away from global solidarity.

Helena Hervius Askling is new in the growing group of expert coordinators at the Centre for Health Crises. Her extensive experience in the field of infectious diseases and the topic of vaccine, as a medical doctor in infectious diseases, county medical officer and associate professor, will strengthen the centre’s competence in the field.