News archive

The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA) has published this year's 100 list of the most promising research projects from Sweden's colleges and universities. All applications to the list have been reviewed by IVA's expert group and the selected projects are considered to have great potential to benefit society. The list includes several projects involving researchers at Karolinska Institutet.

Mehdi Astaraki, a specialist in artificial intelligence (AI) for medical imaging, has achieved remarkable success in the MICCAI BraTS Challenges. He secured first place in the Pediatric Brain Tumor Segmentation and second place in the Meningioma RT Segmentation categories.

The Swedish Brain Foundation has awarded its grants. NVS received five research grants and one scholarship.

The Swedish Research Council has awarded grants in areas such as medicine and health to 121 researchers at KI. In total, KI is allocated SEK 682,507,429 for the period 2024-2030.

The Committee for Research at Karolinska Institutet has decided on recipients from the Jonas Söderquist scholarship foundation for basic research in virology and immunology. The awarded are Benjamin Nilsson Payant at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology and Egle Kvedaraite at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics.

For three days 1 300 EMTs, researchers, health professionals, country delegates and others representing 130 countries gathered in Abu Dhabi for the World Health Organization’s Emergency Medical Teams (EMT) Global Meeting 2024. Members of the research group Global Disaster Medicine – Health Needs and Response, at the Department of Global Public Health at KI, attended the meeting and presented their work to build the EMT global network.

When the prestigious World Laureates Association (WLA) gathered members and invited guests for a conference in Shanghai in October, Robert Harris and other leading KI researchers were on hand to lecture on current research in life science and develop KI's international network of contacts. Among the participants were Joakim Franck, David Gross and nine other Nobel laureates.

The Athena Prize 2024 is awarded to Care to Translate, a digital translation tool adapted for healthcare. The tool was developed to give patients with different language backgrounds the opportunity to communicate with healthcare providers in an efficient way. The purpose of the Athena prize is to draw attention to and reward research and innovations that have taken place in collaboration between academia, healthcare and industry.

While Karolinska Institutet has solid outreach procedures, there are several areas that could do with improvement, according to a report by the Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKÄ) on Swedish universities and university colleges that was presented to the government on October 31.

Elisabet Stener-Victorin has received the Ricardo Azziz Distinguished Researcher Award from the Androgen Excess and PCO Society.

Dr Isabell Brikell has been awarded the Kathy Sylva ‘Rising Star’ Award 2024 from ACAMH - The Association for Child and Adolescent Health.

A big congratulations to Caroline Graff, Wim Grooten, and Malin Nygren-Bonnier for this!

Congratulations to Anna Marseglia, Adrián Carballo Casla, and Minjia Mo, who will share 12.5 million SEK from Forte.

Congratulations to six researchers at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery who receives research grant from the Swedish Cancer Society in their latest call.

Jonna Bister from the Center for Infectious Medicine (CIM) at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge (MedH) is defending her thesis titled "Exploring Human Uterine Immune Cell Dynamics with a Focus on Natural Killer cells and MAIT cells", on 15 November, 2024. Main supervisor is Niklas Björkström (MedH).

In a recent study published in Nature Communications, scientists at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology at Karolinska Institutet, in collaboration with Michigan State University, have introduced an innovative approach to improve plasma proteome profiling. The method enables the detection of low-abundance proteins in plasma.

Congratulations to Linda Björkhem-Bergman and Erland Axelsson for their respective research grants!

Researchers at the Department of Cell and Molacular Biology, Karolinska Institutet have made a major discovery in how human cells produce energy. Their study, published in the EMBO Journal, reveals the detailed mechanisms of how mitochondria process transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules, which are essential for energy production.

The Swedish government has presented an updated strategy for life science with the aim of making Sweden a leading nation in the field. Annika Östman Wernerson, President of KI, has been a member of the advisory group behind the strategy.

We congratulate the eight researchers at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge who have been awarded grants from the Swedish Cancer Society (Cancerfonden) for the period 2025-2029. Together, the MedH researchers are awarded grants of nearly SEK 30 million.

Through the research group Global Disaster Medicine - Health Needs and Responses, KI is one of three universities that are part of the Erasmus Mundus Master's programme Public Health in Disasters. The programme is a unique degree in public health in disasters, that provides students with both practical and theoretical knowledge of public health, health care in disasters and global health care and health systems.

As global populations age and the prevalence of obesity and metabolic disorders rises, understanding the complex relationships between body mass index (BMI), metabolic health, and aging becomes increasingly critical.

The first storm of the autumn lashed Stockholm City Hall, harassing the flames of the outdoor candles and braziers, as the guests arrived to witness 133 doctors and a record 35 jubilee doctors receive their accolades at the KI conferment ceremony. It was an evening of celebration and joy, an evening of fresh opportunities and memories of a long career. It was, in short, a magical evening for the 900 or so guests assembled in the Blue Hall.

Congratulations to our seven researchers at the Division of Neuro, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, who have been granted over 31 million SEK in project grants from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) in their call Medicine and Health, as well as International Collaborations in Neurodegenerative Diseases (JPND), 2024.

On 5 November, a special annual ceremony was held in Aula Medica. Thirteen international master’s students from eleven different countries were honoured with Karolinska Institutet’s Global Master's Scholarship.

The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) has decided on grant applications within Medicine and Health 2024. Researchers at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics were granted over 50 Mkr together.

The Swedish Cancer Society has decided on the research grants for 2024. Researchers from the Department of Oncology-Pathology at Karolinska Institutet received a total of over 70 million SEK.

The Committee for Research has decided to award grants to 15 networks within the call for funds for interdisciplinary research networks. The aim of the initiative is to strengthen scientific quality and promote collaborations across institutional boundaries.

Tahmina Akhter from the Biosciences and Nutrition Unit at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge, is defending her thesis titled "Classification of asthma with cross-cohort clinical data and with enhancer mediated gene regulation", on 15 November, 2024. Main supervisor is Carsten Daub (MedH).

Clinics and hospitals currently defer medication abortion until ultrasound confirms a pregnancy inside the uterus. However, a large international study led by researchers from Karolinska Institutet now indicates that treatment can be equally effective and safe even before the sixth week of pregnancy. The study is published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Professor of developmental biology and former member of the Nobel Assembly Björn Vennström has passed away at the age of 75. He is survived by his wife Kristina, his children Karin and Anders and grandchildren.

Researchers from the Department of Women's and Children's Health received more than SEK 35 million when the Swedish Research Council decided on calls within Medicine and health in 2024.

Viktoria Hansson works at KI as a coordinator for students with disabilities . She is responsible for specialised study adaptations for KI students, known as pedagogical accommodations. We asked her a few common questions about this support.

Researchers, doctoral students and students gathered in Solna on 16–17 October to mark 30 years of fruitful collaboration between Karolinska Institutet and Mayo Clinic at their annual joint conference. The extremely popular and much-appreciated research conference with 600 participants, including 100 from the Mayo Clinic, centred this year on AI and health data, a rapidly growing area that impacts profoundly on the future of healthcare.

Congratulations to the five researchers at GPH who have been awarded project grants from Forte and the Swedish Research Council in their 2024 call for Medicine and Health.

As part of the response to the escalating threat of a global dengue fever epidemic, a new interdisciplinary EU-funded research initiative has been established with KI as coordinator. The COMBAT project aims to develop solutions to manage and mitigate the dengue virus, which causes 100 million infections and 10,000 deaths annually in 141 countries. In addition to the human suffering, the virus causes an economic burden of over EUR 8 billion globally.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the foundation Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. In this year's major round of research funding, the foundation's board of directors has decided to fund a total of 77 projects in the humanities and social sciences for a total of just over SEK 370 million. Five of these projects are run by researchers at Karolinska Institutet.

Congratulations to Ida Nilsson and Richard Rosenquist Brandell who have been granted project grant from the Swedish Research Council in their call Medicine and Health 2024 and to Alexander Fyrdahl who has been granted establishment grant from the Swedish Research Council in their call Natural and Engineering Sciences 2024.

University of Bergen in collaboration with researchers at Karolinska Institutet have been awarded a significant grant funded by Horizon Europe with €7 million during 2024-2028 in recognition of their dedication to target Epstein-Barr virus to treat and prevent Multiple Sclerosis.

Congratulations to Linn Öijerstedt for receiving financial support by BioArctic for her postdoctoral fellowship in the pursue of finding a marker of TDP-43 pathology. In addition, Linn has received grants from Björklunds foundation and Demensfonden for her projects on cognitive and behavioural impairment in ALS.

Juliette Foucher's paper validating the Edingburgh Cognitive and Behavioral ALS Screen (ECAS) in Swedish.

Using a new technique, long-read sequencing, that allows DNA to be analyzed in much greater detail than before, a team of Swedish clinicians and researchers has discovered an unexpected complexity in chromosomal abnormalities. The study opens the door to more precise and effective treatment of patients with rare diseases that currently lack clear diagnoses.

Supervisors Michael Ratz and Kristiina Tammimies share how their students’ participation in NeurotechEU brought back tangible benefits and some exciting new possibilities.

Congratulations to the six researchers at NVS who have been awarded project grants from the Swedish Research Council in their 2024 call for Medicine and Health.

A new collaborative study from Karolinska Institutet published in Science Advances shows that the levels of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) directly influence lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) progression in mice. LUAD is a common subgroup of human lung cancer that typically contains high levels of mtDNA. The link between high mtDNA levels and tumor progression suggests that mtDNA may provide a new therapeutic target and a biomarker for stratifying patients.

In the Swedish Research Council's latest call, SEK 96 000 000 was awarded to 13 researchers at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge (MedH) for the years 2024-2029.

The National Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention announces the first Swedish Suicide Research Conference (SSRC), set to unite experts in suicide research from across Sweden and abroad. This event, partly supported by a Forte grant, will take place in Stockholm in May 6–7, 2025.

In a recently published study, researchers at Karolinska Institutet and KI University Hospital show that radiotherapy (RT) creates an "epigenetic memory" in skin fibroblasts which impairs skin healing in cancer survivors. They also found that by targeting this memory with antibodies the damage could be reversed. This finding can lead to new therapies for both preventing and treating RT-induced skin issues.

Thuy Tran's research group at Karolinska Institutet has been awarded SEK 8 million over three years from the Erling-Persson Foundation to develop a precision-orientated, theranostic, method that integrates the diagnosis and treatment of advanced, solid tumours.

On 23 October, the Stockholm Trio University Alliance hosted a seminar at Karolinska Institutet on how interdisciplinary research and education can contribute to sustainable development. The seminar was organized by Stockholm Trio for Sustainable Actions, an initiative within the alliance that supports Karolinska Institutet, KTH and Stockholm University in their work to contribute to the UN's 17 global goals.