News archive

Harmful use of, for example, alcohol and drugs in working life can lead to fatigue, increased sick leave and reduced productivity. Eight research projects are now being awarded a total of SEK 30 million by Afa Försäkring in a research programme aimed at reducing sick leave due to the harmful use of alcohol and/or drugs. Four of the researchers are from Karolinska Institutet (KI).

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and at Yale University in USA have uncovered how stem cells behave in real-time while adapting their gene expression for differentiation. The study is published in the scientific journal Nature Cell Biology.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have mapped how children are exposed to outdoor advertisement for food in order to better understand their food environment. The results are presented in a report produced by UNICEF Sweden and the Heart Lung Foundation, showing that advertising is dominated by ultra-processed foods. Unhealthy eating habits are important causes of poor health in Sweden and the current report shows that it is not just a public health issue, but also a children's right issue.

The Committee for Research at Karolinska Institutet has decided on recipients from the Jonas Söderquist scholarship foundation for basic research in virology and immunology 2022. Quirin Hammer at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge (MedH) and Daniel Sheward at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor- and Cell Biology (MTC)) are awarded.

Atrial fibrillation is the greatest risk factor for stroke. Screening to detect atrial fibrillation in older people would not only increase the chance of preventing stroke, it would also save money for the healthcare system and society, according to a study conducted at Linköping University and Karolinska Institutet, published in the European Heart Journal.

Ingrid Ekström, postdoctoral researcher at the Aging Research Center (ARC) at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet, has received project support for research in the humanities and social sciences from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

At a ceremony on October 12, Professor Francesco Cosentino was awarded the honorary title Doctor Honoris Causa at the Victor Babeș University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Romania.

In the Swedish Research Council's latest calls, SEK 37.7 million was awarded to 9 researchers at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, MMK, for the period 2023–2027.

In a recently published paper in Nature Communications, Magda Bienkos research group at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology at KI, present the method called FRET-FISH. The method combines fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) with DNA fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) to probe chromatin compaction at select loci in single cells.

Nine NVS researchers receive funding in the latest announcement in medicine and health from the Swedish Research Council.

Representatives from centres within Stockholm trio met at KI for a breakfast meeting and a chance to engage in conversations about activities and collaborations within the topic of climate and health. The collaboration group on climate and health creates spaces and opportunities for interdisciplinary cooperation in this wide and complex field.

In the Swedish Research Council's latest calls, SEK 625,904,933 was awarded to 143 KI researchers. In total, the Swedish Research Council grants just over SEK 1.2 billion for the years 2022–2027.

This year's Special Award goes to Torkel Klingberg, who receives SEK 50,000. The prize aims to celebrate the educational writers behind teaching materials and course literature, and to highlight the important role they play when it comes to education in Sweden.

Hi there, Jie Guo, PhD student at the Division of Aging Research Center (ARC), Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society at Karolinska Institutet! You will defend your thesis entitled "Unraveling the relationship between body mass index and cardiometabolic disease, dementia, and survival in old age" on 10 November 2022. What is the main focus?

Cells that have permanently stopped multiplying, so-called senescent cells, could play an important role in the fight against cancer, according to a new study in mice by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and IRB Barcelona. The study, published in the journal Cancer Discovery, found that vaccination with senescent cancer cells significantly reduced the formation of melanoma and pancreatic cancer tumors in mice.

Schizophrenia patients have fewer connections between nerve cells. This is believed to be caused by genetic risk variants leading to an excessive elimination of nerve cell connections by the immune cells of the brain. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet now report in Nature Communications that the levels of protein from the relevant risk gene are elevated in first-episode patients and that inflammation further increases the expression of the risk gene. 

Hi Martina Bendt, PhD student at the Division of Physiotherapy. On November 18 you will defend your thesis "Adults living with spina bifida – From health and living conditions to motor-cognitive performance", what's the main focus of the thesis?

An observational study at Karolinska Institutet shows that babies suffering oxygen-deficiency complications at birth are almost twice as likely to develop cardiovascular disease during childhood and early adulthood as those without such complications. Still, the absolute risk of cardiovascular disease is very low in young age. The findings are published in the journal The Lancet Regional Health – Europe.

From course-level teaching to strategic educational work. Ewa Ehrenborg, professor of molecular cardiovascular medicine at The Department of Medicine, Solna (MedS) began teaching even before she graduated from the medical programme. Next year, she will take over as Academic Vice President of Higher Education at Karolinska Institutet.

Professor Staffan Strömblad at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition, Karolinska Institutet, has received a grant from World Wide Cancer Research for a project on: "How may mechanotransduction prevent cancer?".

On the 1st of September Mattias Öberg began working 20% at the Centre for Health Crises. His role is to develop the centre’s work with chemical and toxicological health crises. This will be done through, among other things, monitoring, establishing networks, identifying educational and research gaps, as well as identifying how the centre best contributes to the field.

Märit Halmin starts her new role as expert coordinator in the field of ’critical care with limited resources’ at the Centre for Health Crises on the 7th of November. Her role will be to coordinate and develop the centre’s operations within the field.

Petter Ljungman, cardiologist, and Associate Professor at the Institute of Environmental Medicine is the new expert coordinator at the Centre for Health Crises in the field of extreme weather, climate, and health effects. Thereby the centre continues to expand its expertise in various health crises subject areas.

Georgios Sotiriou, principal researcher at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, and his colleagues have developed a durable coating for medical devices which is activated by light, providing on-demand disinfection. The findings are presented in a publication in Chemical Engineering Journal.

Sylvain Peuget, assistant professor at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology at Karolinska Institutet and his team has received 250,000 USD from the Swiss Bridge Foundation. The grant is aimed for continued research to investigate what role that certain bacteria in our intestinal flora play in the development and progression of colorectal cancer.

The LEO fundation has awarded Professor Rikard Holmdahl DKK 3.6 million for research on psoriasis and psoriasis arthritis.

Christer Halldin, Professor at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet, and his team have been awarded a grant of approximately 860,000 US dollars for a project up to three years, from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF).

Professor Fredrik Ullén has been awarded the KI Culture Prize 2022. The prize was awarded during KI's Culture Day on 19 October.

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.