News archive

Karolinska Institutet is proposing, in partnership with Karolinska University Hospital, a national preventative drive aimed at people at risk of committing acts of sexual violence. One initiative is to set up a national knowledge hub.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet describe molecular and cellular consequences of unique genetic mutations affecting the CASK gene which has been implicated in various neurodevelopmental disorders. Notably, the results indicate differences in the development of presynapses of inhibitory neurons in individuals with specific mutations. The findings elucidate key mechanisms during early neuronal maturation and may help to define targets for future drug discoveries for these disorders.

In his thesis, Emilio Ugalde Morales uses a molecular epidemiology approach to investigate the association between risk factors and aggressive breast cancer defined by tumor characteristics, intrinsic subtypes, mode of detection, and survival.

Karolinska Institutet’s Grand Silver Medal 2020 is awarded to Ove Hagelin, Richard J. Heald, Hans Jörnvall, Lars Olson and Nancy Pedersen. The award has been conferred on them in special recognition of their significant contributions to medical research in general and Karolinska Institutet in particular.

While alcohol dependency is becoming increasingly common, it is difficult to obtain help. However, new research presented in a doctoral thesis by Magnus Johansson at Karolinska Institutet shows that web-based CBT is no less effective than face-to-face CBT.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet are taking part in three projects funded as part of the EU’s second major investment in research on the new coronavirus sars-cov-2, COVID-19 and the pandemic. The total research grant for KI amounts to just over SEK 14 million.

Karolinska Institutet's reputation score among the public has risen for the second year in a row, according to new survey results published on 10 September.

Hi Nicola Payton, PhD student at the Aging Research Center (NVS). On October 8 you will defend your thesis “Understanding preclinical dementia: Early detection of dementia through cognitive and biological markers”. What’s the main focus of the thesis?

In a decision announced late yesterday (9 September), the National Board for Assessment of Research Misconduct finds Karin Dahlman-Wright, the former vice-president of Karolinska Institutet, guilty of scientific misconduct with respect to four papers published between 2013 and 2016.

People with autism spectrum disorder have lower levels of a protein that regulates the amount of serotonin in the brain, a paper from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry reports. For their study, the researchers used a molecular brain imaging technique to compare people with and without autism; their results offer hope of finding a drug that can alleviate the symptoms.

Associate Professor Ning Xu Landén from the Department of Medicine, Solna, Division of Dermatology and Venereology is this year’s winner of the LEO Foundation Award in Region EMEA.

KI researcher Saida Hadjab explains pain at the molecular level in an interview in the Swedish web magazine Curie.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Science for Life Laboratory in Sweden and Tor Vergata University of Rome in Italy have mapped the immune response in children affected by a rare but life-threatening inflammatory syndrome associated with COVID-19. The study, which is published in the scientific journal Cell, reveals that the inflammatory response differs from that in Kawasaki disease and severe acute COVID-19.

Dr. Glenn Regehr is awarded the 2020 Karolinska Institutet Prize for Research in Medical Education (KIPRIME.) Dr. Regehr of University of British Columbia, Vancouver (UBC), whose work has improved the educational and scholarly practices in health professions education, will be the tenth winner of this prestigious and coveted award.

Karin Edman assumed the role of Head of Administration at the Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics on 1 September 2020. She has previously worked as financial controller at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society (NVS), and before that, as a controller at Stockholm University of Humanities and Faculty of Law.

The annual ranking is compiled by Times Higher Education (THE) in the UK. In the most recent THE ranking (2020/2021), which was published on September 2, Karolinska Institutet ranks 36th in the world among all universities, regardless of specialization. Last year's corresponding ranking was number 41. Among European universities, KI is in 9th place. Since 2011, when THE changed its methodology, KI's overall placement has varied between 28th and 44th.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have identified a small neutralizing antibody, a so-called nanobody, that has the capacity to block SARS-CoV-2 from entering human cells. The researchers believe this nanobody has the potential to be developed as an antiviral treatment against COVID-19. The results are published in the journal Nature Communications.

The Unit for Bioentrepreneurship (UBE) and the Health Informatics Centre (HIC) at the Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics, have been granted an EU Innovation Action Grant for the project COVID-X, which aims to contribute to the public health preparedness and response in the context of the ongoing pandemic of COVID-19 and to ensure the availability of critical technologies and tools.

Three researchers at Karolinska Institutet have been awarded the 2020 ERC Starting Grant: Niklas Björkström, Janina Seubert and Nils Landegren. Their projects concern resident organ-specific immune cells, the cognitive mechanisms behind our preference of certain foods, and sex-differences in the human immune system and the risk of autoimmune disease. In all, the European Research Council will support 436 early-career researchers with this prestigious grant.

Moritz Lindquist Liljeqvist from the research group Vascular Surgery, Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, will defend his thesis "Geometric, biomechanical and molecular analyses of abdominal aortic aneurysms" on September 11, 2020. Main Supervisor is Joy Roy.

Karolinska Institutet's information management strategy was developed in Spring 2019 and is part of Strategy 2030. The aim is to create concrete, common and established ways forward for the management of information and data at Karolinska Institutet.

A blood test on hospital admission showing the presence or absence of SARS-CoV-2 can identify patients at a high risk of severe COVID-19. Admitted patients without virus in their blood have a good chance of rapid recovery. This according to researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Danderyd Hospital in a new study published in the scientific journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Active lifestyle choices such as eating vegetables, exercising and quitting smoking can reduce the risk of chronic kidney disease, a new study led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Griffith University in Australia, reports. The study is published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

At the initiative of Torgny's former PhD students and colleagues, a scientific prize has been initiated in Torgny's honor, the Torgny H. Svensson Award. The prize is awarded during the SCNP's annual conference where the recipient of the prize is offered to give a scientific lecture.

Modafinil is used to treat conditions such as narcolepsy. Reports have associated the drug with an increased risk of malformation in babies born to mothers who had taken it while pregnant. Now, a large registry study involving over two million pregnant women in Sweden and Norway shows that there is no such association. The study, which is published in JAMA, was conducted by researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

Researcher Monica Nyström (SOLIID) was a co-applicant in one of the projects that received funding in Forte's (the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working LIfe and Welfare) call for implementation research in early Spring.

Researcher Elisabet Höög (SOLIID) was a co-applicant in one of the projects that received funding from Forte, the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, in early Spring.

Two recent studies were unable to rule out that H1N1 (“swine flu”) vaccination (“Pandemrix”) and seasonal influenza vaccination given to pregnant women might be associated with autism spectrum disorder in the offspring. Now, a large study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, refutes any such association.

The Directors of NextGenNK will present their research and the Competence Center at the digital event - Innate Killer Summit 2021, March 23-25. The meeting will focus on NK cell-based immunotherapies and their clinical translation.

On August 27, Karolinska Institutet held a digital welcome ceremony for all new international students. Over 250 viewers followed the broadcast live. Did you miss it? No problem, we saved it and published in for you!

The coronavirus pandemic highlighted the increased need for knowledge and skills within the field of geriatric care. KI is offering a specialist nursing programme with a focus on care for the elderly.

ME/CFS is a devastating disease with unknown genesis and no curative treatment. Some call the disease ME (Myalgic encephalomyelitis) and others CFS (Chronic fatigue syndrome), but the official name is ME/CFS.
A research team at Karolinska Institutet and Bragée Clinics in Region Stockholm has now published a study that shows previously unknown background factors.

A recent study in Science Advances by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Max Planck Institute, shows that neurons can counteract degeneration and promote survival by adapting their metabolism. It challenges the long-standing view that neurons cannot adjust their metabolism and therefore irreversibly degenerate. These findings may contribute to developing therapeutic approaches for patients with mitochondrial diseases and other types of neurodegeneration, such as Parkinson’s Disease.

At the moment we live in an era where it is easier to generate data than to interpret them. The focus of Zheng Ning’s thesis is on methodology and analysis to exploit novel biological knowledge from published results of genome-wide association study (GWAS).

People with dementia disease receiving home care feel that they are not treated with the same degree of respect and dignity as people who do not have dementia and receive the same service. That is according to a study by researchers at Mälardalen University (MDH), Karolinska Institutet and Dalarna University, published in The Journal of the American Medical Directors Association (JAMDA).

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden have compared the ability of three different artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to identify breast cancer based on previously taken mammograms. The best algorithm proved to be as accurate as the average radiologist. The results, published in JAMA Oncology, may lead the way in reorganising breast cancer screening for the future.

How does our body affect the way we think about our personality? Would our sense of self change if one day our mind woke up, for example, inside the body of our best friend? A recent study published in the journal iScience shows that the above questions are no longer exclusively reserved for science-fiction movies.

Karolinska Institutet and St. Erik Eye Hospital have entered into a collaboration with Novo Nordisk A/S to develop a new treatment for age-related macular degeneration. Novo Nordisk A/S will provide support and SEK 48 million in funding to enable a phase 1 clinical trial where new retinal cells generated from embryonic stem cells will be transplanted into patients. The aim is to develop a completely new cell therapy for this common but currently incurable eye disease.

Since 15 June, the requirements for distance learning have been eased and this autumn there will be a gradual return to KI's campus. But the unusual spring semester has yielded valuable lessons and experiences. Head of Division Ann Langius-Eklöf and lecturer Carina Georg recount what it was like for the nursing education programmes – to work against the clock.

On 17 March 2020, the Public Health Agency of Sweden encourages Swedish universities and upper-secondary schools to conduct distance learning in order to reduce the spread of COVID-19. The campus closes on 18 March, but teaching must continue. For KI’s teachers, it’s the start of an intensive undertaking, one that proved particularly challenging for the Unit for Teaching and Learning.

Researchers may have come one step closer toward understanding how the immune system contributes to severe COVID-19. In a study published in Science Immunology, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden show that so-called natural killer (NK) cells were strongly activated early after SARS-CoV-2 infection but that the type of activation differed in patients with moderate and severe COVID-19. The discovery contributes to our understanding of development of hyperinflammation in some patients.

Hi there Therese Scott Duncan, who held her licentiate seminar with the title "Paving the way - the second generation of e-patients, their experiences, actions and driving forces" in May. Congratulations! Can you tell us a little more?

Earlier this week, a new ranking of the world universities came from the Academic Ranking of World Universities, ARWU (also called the Shanghai ranking). This ranking has been a relatively stable ranking since it was introduced in 2003.

In an interdisciplinary study combining developmental biology and computational biology, researchers from Karolinska Institutet and Medical University of Vienna (together with researchers in US, Italy and France), have revealed a dynamic transcriptomic roadmap of the development of somatosensory neurons and extracted mechanistic insights of cell fate decision. Results from this study are published in Nature communications.

Olga Nilsson from the research group Vascular Surgery, Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, will defend her thesis "Development, evaluation and patient experiences of eHealth in the care of abdominal aortic aneurysm" on September 4, 2020. Main Supervisor is Rebecka Hultgren.

Professor Jonas F Ludvigsson, at MEB, KI has been appointed national scientific expert in pediatrics at the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet reveal mechanisms of neuron vulnerability and resistance in spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) by investigating gene activity dynamics of different neurons in a mouse model. The study was recently published in the journal Genome Research.

New student at Karolinska Institutet? Back on campus after the spring? Take the chance to participate in our photo competition #helloKI. Share your experience as a student at KI and get the possibility to be published on KI’s Instagram, and the chance to win a goodiebag!

KI has introduced a new application system from August 18, 2020, so if you want to utilize the resources of the Twin Registry, you must now use the web based system iLab.

New research from Karolinska Institutet shows that the degree of frailty, a measure of a person’s functional level before contracting the disease, can better predict COVID-19 survival than the patient’s age. The analysis of 250 multimorbid older adults who received care for COVID-19 at the Aging Theme at Karolinska University Hospital in Huddinge, Sweden also shows that three out of four of these patients survived. The study has been published in the scientific journal JAMDA.