News archive

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have identified key signalling pathways that when blocked by existing drug candidates limit reproduction of the Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF) virus. The findings, published in the journal eLife, offer hope for patients affected by this potentially deadly disease.

A research group at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden has analysed how certain immune cells known as innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) develop into mature cells that play a part in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The findings could pave the way for more effective treatments against IBD, a disease that causes considerable suffering and that is linked to an increased risk of colorectal cancer. The results are published today in the journal Science Immunology.

A large database is being built in China aiming to study brain aging and explore effective approaches for prevention of dementia. A study published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions (TRCI) provides detailed description on the database as well as characteristics and health conditions of the study population. The database is called MIND-China--multimodal interventions to delay dementia and disability in rural China.

The Centre for Health Crises at Karolinska Institutet is now a member of the WHO’s network GOARN – Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network. Via the network, the Centre for Health Crises can contribute with staff and resources to health emergencies and crises around the world.

The organisation Climate Students recently published the report Climate Action Ranking, where they rank Sweden's higher education institutions according to their climate work. In this year’s report, KI came in third place.

Allan Bakesiga and Linda Atulinda are medical students at Makerere University in Uganda. They are currently doing an exchange at Karolinska Institutet through a collaboration between the two universities. It is one of the most comprehensive international collaborations at KI which has enabled students, researchers, and professors to do exchanges both ways for many years.

Katja Petzold has been awarded the Hugo Theorell Prize in biophysics 2022. The focus in her lab is to study structural changes in RNA – e.g. the RNA in the ribosome – and to develop methods for this purpose.

A researcher at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition, Karolinska Institutet, has received the SSMF (Svenska Sällskapet för medicinsk forskning) postdoctoral grant of SEK 3 million for three years, for a project on "Anti-senescence Immunotherapy for the treatment of pulmonary fibrosis”.

Virtual lab training can cater for different types of learning abilities among students and offer a variety of techniques that might not be possible to teach/learn during an on-campus course. Karolinska Institutet, through the Biomedicine programmes, is coordinating the virtual laboratory training module in a new Erasmus+ project focusing on virtual/online practical training.

Mara Mennuni has been awarded a grant from the Alex and Eva Wallström foundation.

Scientists have analysed DNA from more than 300,000 people with and without the psychiatric disorder in the largest genetic study of schizophrenia to date and have identified a great number of specific genes that could play important roles in the psychiatric disorder. A companion paper published in parallel strengthens these findings by pointing to a similar genetic and biological basis for this disorder. Both studies are published today in the leading international journal Nature.

KI’s ultra modern education and research in the field of dentistry/dental care has topped the QS World University Rankings for the third time. We meet Bodil Lund, head of the Department of Dental Medicine, to hear her views on being no 1 on the world’s most important ranking list.

A review of scientific literature investigating the impact of economic crises on suicide has been carried out through a project funded by Region Stockholm. Most of the included studies show a risk of an increase in suicide during and after economic crises. At the same time, the results from a couple of studies indicate that countries that have invested more in welfare, for example the Scandinavian countries, seem to have fared better compared with countries that have invested less in welfare.

A new study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet identify major sex differences in the timing of X chromosome upregulation, a finding that is vital for understanding central gene-regulatory processes in early fetal development. The results are published in Nature Communications.

Birgitta Henriques Normark has been elected new President of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. She will succeed the present President, Dan Larhammar, on July 1st.

A recent study published in Indoor Air by Antonio Rothfuchs et al, is the first to demonstrate active SARS-CoV-2 in air. Infectious SARS-CoV-2 was recovered from the air in rooms occupied by COVID-19 patients. This result strongly supports the aerosol route of transmission for SARS-CoV-2 and urges the revision of infection control frameworks for COVID-19 to include airborne transmission.

Karolinska Institutet recently held its “Global Masters Scholarship Ceremony” in honor of the non-European Master’s students who receive a scholarship based on academic merit.

18 May The Centre for Epidemiology and Community Medicine at Region Stockholm and the Department of Global Public Health at KI invite to the lecture Agenda for reducing cannabis use and crime in Stockholm County. The lecture is based on a series of reports from the Centre on cannabis-related problems among young people in Stockholm County, with themes such as links between cannabis and lethal violence, the geography of cannabis crimes, attitudes to cannabis and health care consumption.

What smells we like or dislike is primarily determined by the structure of the particular odour molecule. A collaborative study involving researchers from Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, and the University of Oxford, UK, shows that people share odour preferences regardless of cultural background. The study is published in the journal Current Biology.

This year's call includes positions as Assistant Professor, Senior Research specialist / Principal Researcher (for already employed Assistant Professors with the earlier Swedish title forskarassistent) and Consolidator grants.

The initiative focuses on research in the subject area of Medical science in a broad sense - including Medicine, Health care and Health. The last day to apply is April 28.

The Stategic Research Area Neuroscience, StratNeuro, announces up to ten grants to support postdoctoral researchers at Karolinska Institutet. This StratNeuro funding aims to support outstanding postdoctoral researchers in basic and clinical neuroscience.

StratNeuro has awarded SEK 1,000,000 in start-up grant 2022 to Enric Llorens, Arvid Guterstam and Jeroen Goos.

Miriam Nauri will be the new Library Director at Karolinska Institutet's University Library (KIB). She will take up the post in September 2022. Welcome!

High blood glucose is responsible for several complications in type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have identified a new antidiabetic substance that preserves the activity of insulin-producing beta cells and prevents high blood glucose in mice. The study is published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Collections of human remains were once a common feature of medical universities, where they were used for both education and research. Karolinska Institutet itself was home to some 800 skulls and other bones, which were kept in boxes stored in specially designated places – where they have remained untouched for decades. This – and more besides – was the subject of a seminar arranged by KI’s Ethics Council on Tuesday.

Christine Fransman was looking for something new in her career and wanted to learn more about health care in disasters when she found the course Public Health Response in Disasters at Karolinska Institutet. She has a background in health science and works as a research manager in a hospital in her native Netherlands.

Researchers at the Department of Oncology-Pathology has published a paper in Nature Communications where they created a cell line resource dataset and analysis tool that could be used to identify the traits that make specific leukemias sensitive to new types of targeted therapies.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and SLU have managed to do what nature itself cannot. By using insights of basic biological principles and protein engineering they have managed to increase the artificial silk fibers' mechanical properties, which resulted in fibers with increased tensile strength and two fiber types displayed toughness equal to native spider silks and a yield in line with the requirements for an economically viable industrial bulk scale production.

Six students from the Master's Programme in Global Health guested the Global Child Health and Sustainable Development Goals team meeting to present their thesis projects. Many thanks to all of you that joined our meeting and a special thanks to the students for their nice presentations and the good discussions that followed.

A new study shows how antibodies select the antigens that they bind to, as they navigate the surface of pathogens like coronaviruses. Researchers from KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Karolinska Institutet have created a model that suggests the migration of these pathogen hunters may be akin to the random movements of a child playing on stream laden with stepping stones.

The Svedberg prize 2022 is awarded to Ben Murrell, Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, for his work characterizing antibody responses to viruses, especially the virus SARS-CoV-2.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have developed a novel strategy for identifying potent miniature antibodies, so-called nanobodies, against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. The approach led to the discovery of multiple nanobodies that in cell cultures and mice effectively blocked infection with different SARS-CoV-2 variants. The findings, which are described in the journals Nature Communications and Science Advances, could pave the way for new treatments against COVID-19.

Here, Center Director Hans-Gustaf Ljunggren present some personal recollections and reflections of research in the field of NK cells and work conducted in his laboratory over three decades, leading up towards the current utilization of NK cells in the context of human cancer immunotherapy.

Vaccination against COVID-19 during pregnancy is not associated with a higher risk of pregnancy complications, according to a large-scale registry study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health published in the journal JAMA.

A new study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet shows that the local activity of the signaling molecule Rac1 controls cycles of microscopic protrusions and retractions of the cell membrane. The cell uses these cycles to sense its surroundings, which among other things affects the cell's ability to move. Understanding of the cellular and molecular mechanisms that control cell movements, can help us to develop better diagnostics and treatment of various diseases such as cancer.

Cecilia Haddad Ringborg at the research group Surgical Care Science, Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, will defend her thesis "The perspective of being a family caregiver of a patient treated for oesophageal cancer : problems and needs" on April 1, 2022. Main Supervisor is Pernilla Lagergren.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have identified a protein that protects against breast tumour growth and that can be linked to a better prognosis in breast cancer patients. The results, which are published in the journal Nature Communications, may contribute to the development of new therapies for difficult-to-treat forms of breast cancer.

On March 16 the Minister for International Development Cooperation visited Karolinska Institutet to discuss current research about vaccination and development cooperation for health. The visit was made in conjunction with National Vaccination Week, which has the aim of achieving more people being vaccinated against Covid 19.

Late last year, preliminary studies revealed that the fast-spreading Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variant was likely to evade COVID-19 antibodies but, in many people, less so than expected. Now one of those studies from Karolinska Institutet has been published in the prestigious journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases. KI researcher Ben Murrell explains the findings and recalls the rush to understand the new variant.

Ulrika Marklund has been awarded the European Research Council’s Consolidator grant 2022 for research about how different neurons within the enteric nervous system (ENS) obtain their identities.

The causes of complex diseases can be identified by representing them in the form of mathematically produced networks. This method was used to find bacteria that drive atopic dermatitis, for example.

People who were bedridden for at least a week due to COVID-19 were more likely to experience anxiety and depression for up to 16 months after the infection, compared with those who only had mild symptoms or were never infected. That is according to a large study based on data from six countries and conducted by an international team of researchers including those from Karolinska Institutet and the University of Iceland. The findings are published in The Lancet Public Health.

The PREFERABLE II consortium, of which Yvonne Wengström is a member, has received EU funding for the project "Personalised Exercise-Oncology for improvement of supportive care: a super umbrella trial to demonstrate the (cost)effectiveness of live-remote exercise in cancer survivors."

There is a lack of understanding as to why some people suffer from long-lasting symptoms after COVID-19 infection. A new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, the Helmholtz Center Munich (HMGU) and the Technical University of Munich (TUM), both in Germany, now demonstrates that a certain type of immune cell called macrophages show altered inflammatory and metabolic expression several months after mild COVID-19. The findings are published in the journal Mucosal Immunology.

The p53 protein protects our cells from cancer and is an interesting target for cancer treatments. The problem is, however, that it breaks down rapidly in the cell. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now found an unusual way of stabilising the protein and making it more potent. By adding a spider silk protein to p53, they show that it is possible to create a protein that is more stable and capable of killing cancer cells. The study is published in the journal Structure.

Researchers from the Division of Biochemistry, in collaboration with scientists from University of L'Aquila in Italy, Rush University and University of California San Francisco in the US, have now for the first time characterized the crystal structure and activity of the B. malayi and O. volvulus antioxidant systems, thereby paving the way for the development of more efficient targeted redox-based therapies.

Gunilla Lööf, affiliated with the Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics (LIME), is passionate about clinical implementation of research results and hopes for increased collaboration between clinic and academy. Her project The Anesthesia Web is now being highlighted in The Lancet.

Tyler Sandberg, Center for Infectious Medicine (CIM) at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge is defending his thesis "B cell responses to human flavivirus vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 infection" on March 18, 2022. Main Supervisor is Professor Hans-Gustaf Ljunggren.

The Swedish Kidney Foundation has appointed the researchers who will be receiving money this year for kidney research. Out of a total of 49 researchers and SEK 6.1 million, 19 researchers at Karolinska Institutet will share SEK 2.2 million. In connection with the recognition of the grants, one KI researcher will be awarded the Bengt Rippes Research Prize.

Tinnitus is the experience of annoying sounds that no one else can hear, a kind of phantom sound. The problem is increasing, probably due to exposure to high noise levels.