News archive

Last week, the Swedish Council for Higher Education (UHR) released statistics on the number of applicants for education programmes starting in the spring semester of 2023 at Swedish universities and colleges. The statistics show that KI’s medical programme has the second highest number of first-choice applicants among all education programmes in Sweden.

With new digital tools in healthcare, researchers at Karolinska Institutet, with collaborators, are hoping to prevent cases of rheumatoid arthritis. They recently collected a total of 3.5 million euro (around 38 million Swedish kronor) for the so-called DigiPrevent project, most of which comes from EIT Health, a network established by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.

Through the ESPRESSO cohort, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, University of Newcastle, Australia, University of Washington, Seattle, and Karolinska Institutet examined the risk of cancer among 75,000 patients with a diagnosis of diverticular disease and colorectal histopathology. The paper is now published in JNCI, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The recruitment process for KI’s new vice-president has begun, and staff and students are invited to nominate suitable candidates.

From the 1st of January 2023, the rent will be increased for all current and incoming tenants staying with KI Housing due to increased rental costs from the landlords.

We congratulate David Freiholtz of the Thoracic Surgery research group who was awarded a prize for best abstract on genetic and familial aspects of aortic aneurysms by the European Society for CardioVascular and Endovascular Surgery, at the ESCVS and IMAD meeting in Liège this June.

The ReHIn MOOC is a 3 week course for enabling the integration of refugees into the EU health culture. Through creative digital resources, students will learn about health services and healthcare systems.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet Qiaolin Deng and Georgios Sotiriou receive the KI Research Incubator (KIRI) Fellow postdoc grant 2022. The KIRI Fellow grant finances a postdoc for a collaborative interdisciplinary project. The awarded project aims to expand the use of tailored nanoparticles as drug carriers to deliver them to a dysfunctional placenta providing treatments to improve the child’s metabolic health.

65 researchers at Karolinska Institutet received KID-funding in the call 2022, and four of these are active researchers at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge (MedH).

Autistic young men and women are more affected by psychiatric conditions and have an increased risk of being hospitalized as a result of their mental illness compared with non-autistic people. Autistic women are particularly vulnerable. This is shown by researchers from Karolinska Institutet in a study published in JAMA Psychiatry.

65 researchers at Karolinska Institutet received KID-funding in the call 2022 and five of these are active researchers at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have found that the perception of one's own body is largely based on the brain making guesses based on probability theory. The results are shown in a study recently published in the journal eLife.

A total of eight research projects share close to SEK 50 million in the call “Lise Meitner Grants for Israeli-Swedish Research Collaboration”, a collaboration between the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, SSF, and the Israelian Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology, MOST. Two of the research projects are being conducted at Karolinska Institutet.

How do people decide whether to intervene and help others in danger? Researchers at Karolinska Institutet now show that the same system in the brain that enables us to avoid danger is also activated during selfless, helping behaviour. The results are published in the scientific journal eLife.

When Research.com ranks the best female researchers in Sweden, two IMM researchers are among the top ten.

We congratulate the three researchers who receive project grants for almost five million SEK each:

Karolinska Institutet signs an agreement on collaboration with Huddinge municipality – the focus will be on equity in health and prevention, for a healthy life. On Tuesday, October 25, KI's President Ole Petter Ottersen and Huddinge municipality’s Director Camilla Broo signed the agreement.

The Committee for doctoral education has in the 2022 KID call, decided to award KID funding to a total of 65 grants. Four of these grants go to active researchers within the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology (FyFa).

Hepatitis A is an acute liver disease caused by the hepatitis A virus (HAV) and transmitted via the faecal-oral route through person-to-person transmission, contaminated food or water. While hepatitis A infection is mostly asymptomatic in children, the frequency and severity of symptoms increases with age, with the elderly and patients with other liver disease at risk of hospitalisation, acute liver failure and death.

To want to save lives. To inspire the next generation of students. And be extremely tempted by the buffet outside the auditorium. All emotions came forth when a group of new professors were installed at KI.

During a visit to Sweden this week, WHO Europe’s director Dr Hans Kluge had time for a brief, but cordial, visit to KI. Dr Kluge met with Vice President Anders Gustafsson and the director of the Centre for Health Crises, Professor Johan von Schreeb, along with the centre’s strategic process leader Dr Anna Zorzet. The quartet talked about matters of common interest and about initiatives related to health crises in particular.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have in a new study used cellular reprogramming to create human three-dimensional brain models and infected these models with SARS-CoV-2. In infected models, the brain immune cells excessively eliminated synapses and acquired a gene expression pattern mimicking what has been observed in neurodegenerative disorders. The findings could help to identify new treatments against persistent cognitive symptoms after a Covid-19 infection.

Two researchers at Karolinska Institutet have been awarded the Athena prize for an AI-based image analysis in precision medicine for risk classification of breast cancer patients. The Athena Prize is Sweden's largest prize for research and innovations that have been produced through collaboration between healthcare, academia and industry.

While prostate cancer claims many lives, overtreatment is also a significant problem. Martin Eklund develops methods of individualising diagnosis and treatment to reduce fatalities and overtreatment.

Karolinska Institutet hosted the annual meeting with the Swedish national Network in Epidemiology and Nutrition (NEON). The theme for this year’s meeting was: ”Digital lifestyle interventions and BigData in nutritional research”. Around a hundred researchers and practitioners in nutrition and epidemiology from all over Sweden met in Flemingsberg.

Through the Horizon Europe programme, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have been granted large financial grants for approximately 20 different projects aimed at solving various societal challenges in health. One of the projects will explore the possibility of creating a common system for the reuse of already approved medicines to treat various diseases.

A new study from Karolinska Institutet and the Karolinska University Hospital indicates that only a rather small proportion of individuals attending a specialized memory clinic have an Alzheimer’s disease-type biomarker profile and could be considered eligible for novel disease-modifying treatments targeting amyloid.

Among patients with kidney cancer, the activity of four specific genes in the cancer cells seems to be able to predict the risk of the tumour spreading and the patient’s chances of survival. This is shown by researchers from Karolinska Institutet in a preclinical study published in Nature Communications.

Approximately 9,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year in Sweden, a number that has been steadily increasing since the 1990s. However, the prognosis for breast cancer has improved, more and more women can now be cured with a combination of surgery, radiotherapy and medical treatment.

At Karolinska Institutet's Inauguration Ceremony in Aula Medica on October 13th, 2022, KI's new professors were presented and academic prizes were awarded. The Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery was represented at the celebration by two new professors and one academic award.

Congratulations to researchers at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition, Karolinska Institutet, who have received grants from "Henning och Johan Throne-Holst stiftelse" 2022.

“Our planet, our health – an intergenerational dialogue” – the title of this year’s Rosling Seminar at Karolinska Institutet. The seminar, which was held 5 October, was jointly arranged by KI and the WHO with participants attending on site and online.

The range of cancer therapies is growing quickly, but it is often hard to know in advance which drug will help a particular patient. Rimma Axelsson uses PET imaging to select patients for effective targeted treatment.

What does continuous learning mean to us, and what can it look like in practice? These questions were the focus for the 170 participants who participated in the two day Educational Congress. The congress was permeated by meetings, inspiration and exchange of knowledge and experiences in the field. Among the activities at the congress, KI's pedagogical policy was launched.

Andrew Buckler at the research group Vascular Surgery, the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, will defend his thesis "Linking quantitative radiology to molecular mechanism for improved vascular disease therapy selection and follow-up" on October 21, 2022. Main Supervisor is Ulf Hedin.

Rune Brautaset has modernised optometry studies at KI and laid the groundwork for an optometric research environment at the university. He is currently researching how neurodegenerative diseases can be detected in the retina.

Marie Löf, at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition, is a new Professor in Nutrition as of February 1st, 2022. Yesterday, October 13th, 2022, the inauguration of new professors at Karolinska Institutet took place with an installation ceremony in Aula Medica.

Four research projects coordinated from Karolinska Institutet have been awarded project grants by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (KAW) in 2022. This means that, over SEK 135 million are allocated to KI research in the fields of immunology, neuroscience, and stem cell biology.

Professor Kevin Eva of the University of British Columbia, Canada, is this year’s winner of the Karolinska Institutet Prize in Medical Education. He received his accolade in KI’s Aula Medica in conjunction with the university’s installation ceremony on 13 October. Among its many consequences, his research has helped to improve the admission processes at medical universities.

A study at Karolinska Institutet shows that the coronavirus variant BA.2.75.2, an Omicron sublineage, largely evades neutralizing antibodies in the blood and is resistant to several monoclonal antibody antiviral treatments. The findings, published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases, suggest a risk of increased SARS-CoV-2 infections this winter, unless the new updated bivalent vaccines help to boost immunity in the population.

The multiple sclerosis (MS) research consortium at Karolinska institutet is
further strengthened by the recruitment of the distinguished MS scientist, Roland
Martin.

Gonçalo Castelo-Branco investigates the cells that produce myelin, the vital insulation that ensheathes our nerve cells. He has made unexpected findings that might help to explain what causes MS and eventually give rise to novel treatments.

Mattias Carlström researches the beneficial effects of nitric oxide on the body, including the cardiovascular system and kidneys, in order to understand the biological mechanisms and pave the way for the clinical use of different forms of nitrate that can increase concentrations of nitric oxide.

The prefrontal cortex is the centre for advanced cerebral function – it is here our impressions of the world are formed, plans forged and decisions made. By studying the real-time activity of neurons, Marie Carlén maps the functions of the prefrontal cortex.

Congratulations to the winners of this year’s KI Lifestyle4Health Best paper award for junior researchers. In this occasion, two, of many fantastic publications that were nominated, shared the first place:

Katalin Dobra researches cancer of the lungs, especially the part played by the protein Syndecan 1. Education is an important aspect of her professorship and she is in charge of the pathology module of the new medical programme.

For two days in the first week of October, Karolinska Institutet for the first time invited members of the public to partake in guided tours of the Nordic region’s largest zebrafish facility. More than 40 people took the opportunity, offered as part of Nobel Calling 2022, to visit more than 20,000 tropical freshwater fish that are helping to solve medical mysteries.

KI is still the Nordic Region’s highest ranking university, but has dropped ten places from 39 to 49 in this year’s Times Higher Education (THE) overall rankings over all subject fields. Other EU universities have also dropped, while those in Asia, especially China, have advanced. The UK and USA remain relatively stable. Universities with a technological profile have also fared better than the average.

Good health in the future through the development and application of the best possible medical education is the guiding star for Anna Kiessling’s work – for both research and quality work at Karolinska Institutet.

Transporting drugs to the right place and into the right cells is a major challenge. Samir EL Andaloussi researches how tiny vesicles called exosomes, which naturally transport material between cells, can be used for this purpose.