News archive

The Department of Physiology and Pharmacology is celebrating 75 years since its royal inauguration on the Solna campus. But FyFa's history goes further back than that - and looks forward to many years of community and outstanding research and teaching. On 23 April, the department celebrates with a full day of lectures and a Dragons’ Den.

Regular erections could be important for maintaining erectile function, according to a new study on mice published in Science by researchers at Karolinska Institutet. “We discovered that an increased frequency of erections leads to more fibroblasts that enable erection and vice versa, that a decreased frequency results in fewer of these cells,” says principal investigator Christian Göritz.

Can scientific methods be used to identify who is best suited for physically and mentally demanding missions? In his doctoral thesis, Peter Tedeholm explores the individual characteristics of Swedish operational police officers.

After half a century in near-Earth orbit, humans are heading further out in space. First to the moon again. Then on to Mars! For this to go well, more research is needed on how space stresses the human body.

Although a simple molecule, nitric oxide is an important signal substance that helps to reduce blood pressure by relaxing the blood vessels. But how it goes about doing this has long been unclear. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden now present an entirely novel principle that challenges the Nobel Prize-winning hypothesis that the substance signals in its gaseous form. Their findings are presented in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

A new study led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet has examined how T cells of the immune system are affected by weightlessness. The results, which are published in the journal Science Advances, could explain why astronauts’ T cells become less active and less effective at fighting infection.

In the project to be presented, Pauline Mattsson, Lund University, has studied how the research behind Nobel prizes has come to use and which knowledge transfer mechanisms and actors are important in getting the research out to society.

An international team of researchers has developed a new method to deliver drugs into the inner ear, according to a new study in Science Translational Medicine. The discovery was possible by harnessing the natural flow of fluids in the brain and employing a little-understood backdoor into the cochlea. When combined to deliver a gene therapy that repairs inner ear hair cells, the researchers were able to restore hearing in deaf mice.

On the international news site The Conversation you can read an article by Logan Pendergrast and Juleen Zierath, of the Integrative Physiology research group, where they explain their latest findings on “Morning exercise burns more body fat, mouse study shows".

Critical illness myopathy (CIM) is a common complication affecting ventilator-treated intensive care patients, which can lead to increased mortality/morbidity, prolonged hospital care, impaired patient quality of life, and increased healthcare costs. reported molecular pathogenesis of CIM during prolonged ICU stay, and potential diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets. The study was recently published in Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle.

We congratulate the research group Clinical Physiology at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, where a total of five researchers were granted millions from the Swedish Research Council and the Heart-Lung Foundation 2022.

We warmly welcome Professor Marcus Carlsson to the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery. Marcus Carlsson was appointed Professor of Clinical Physiology on November 7, 2022 and he combines the professorship with a position as senior consultant at the Department of Clinical Physiology, Karolinska University Hospital. Marcus Carlsson was nominated to KI from the National Institutes of Health, USA, where he led the research group "Clinical Physiology".

We congratulate David Marlevi at the Clinical Physiology Research Group, Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, who is one of three researchers at Karolinska Institutet to be awarded the European Research Council's prestigious ERC Starting Grant 2022.

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).

Magnus Ingelman-Sundberg at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology is awarded with the R.T. Williams Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award 2022. In recognition of his outstanding scientific contributions in the field of drug research.

People with long-term neuropathic pain took significantly fewer sick days from work after treatment with spinal cord stimulation, according to a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet published in the journal PAIN. The findings suggest that the treatment has the potential to increase life quality for chronic pain patients and reduce costs to society, the researchers say.

Swedish Foundations' Starting Grant 2020 is awarded to KI researcher, Carl Sellgren Majkowitz for his research in schizophrenia.

Almost one in five people lacks the protein α-actinin-3 in their muscle fibre. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet now show that more of the skeletal muscle of these individuals comprises slow-twitch muscle fibres, which are more durable and energy-efficient and provide better tolerance to low temperatures than fast-twitch muscle fibres. The results are published in The American Journal of Human Genetics.

A fundamental process by which cellular components are degraded is Autophagy. Defects in Autophagy pathways are strongly associated with multiple human diseases, including neurodegenerative disorders and cancer. Despite their importance, to date, a comprehensive characterization of the extent and selectivity for Autophagic degradomes has remained largely uncharacterized. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have in two studies published in the journal Autophagy mapped out how this happens.

In a new study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have studied CYP2C19 and CYP2D6 genes impact on treatment with antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs. The study shows that a control of the patient’s genotype can be used to individualize the drug treatment and lead to a more effective treatment.

Congratulations Jorge Ruas, newly appointed Professor of molecular physiology at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet.

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.

Sophie Erhardt's research group, at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology Karolinska Institutet, has been awarded a research grant of in total SEK 1,200,000 from The Swedish Brain Foundation.

Thanks to new technology, researchers at the Clinical Physiology group, Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, Karolinska Institutet, have been able to show that females have higher myocardial perfusion, blood volume and extracellular volume in the heart compared to males. These findings were recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Decades-long endurance training alters the activity of genes in human skeletal muscle that are important for metabolic health. This is according to a new study published in the journal Cell Reports by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the University of San Diego in the U.S. Sex differences found in untrained individuals were also dramatically reduced with long-term training. The results may have implications for metabolic disease prevention.

The Association for Research in Otolaryngology (ARO) announce Christopher Cederroth as the recipient for The Geraldine Dietz Fox Young Investigator Award at the 2020 ARO Annual MidWinter Meeting. Christopher Cederroth got the prestigious award for his hearing and tinnitus research.

Babies born with low birth weights are more likely to have poor cardiorespiratory fitness later in life than their normal-weight peers. That is according to a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in the journal JAHA. The findings underscore the importance of prevention strategies to reduce low birth weights even among those carried to at term delivery.

A multiple organ-on-chip platform developed by researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Karolinska Institutet and Harvard University could drastically accelerate drug testing. The technology, described today in Nature Biomedical Engineering, provides accurate predictions of drug effects prior to clinical testing.

The Deutsche Tinnitus Stiftung Charité has announced the creation of “The Research Prize in Tinnitus and Hearing”, awarded to outstanding achievements in the research areas covering causes, early detection and therapy of tinnitus and hearing damage.

A novel study, published in the scientific journal Cardiovascular Research, identifies that maternal androgen excess increases the risk of cardiovascular disease in female animal offspring. The findings could have important clinical implications for women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and may explain why women with PCOS and their daughters have increased risk of developing cardiovascular dysfunction in adult life.

By applying gene analysis to individual cells from early mouse embryos, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have discovered previously unknown cellular stages of fetal development from fertilised egg to living being. The study is published in the scientific journal Cell Reports.

It is the pancreatic islets that have the overall responsibility for maintaining normal blood glucose levels in our bodies, according to a new study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, USA. The findings, published in the scientific journal Cell Metabolism, have important implications for certain diabetes treatments.

A new study from Karolinska Institutet shows that the same mechanisms behind the beneficial effects of exercise training on the brain also help to counteract fat and to strengthen the immune system. The results, which are published in the journal Cell Metabolism, can ultimately give rise to new obesity and diabetes drugs.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded for work dedicated to the connection between celestial body movements and molecular fluctuations in our cells. Or, in simpler terms, to our internal biological clocks, also known as our circadian rhythm.

Physical exercise has many beneficial effects on human health, including the protection from stress-induced depression. However, until now the mechanisms that mediate this protective effect have been unknown.

In a study in mice, Swedish and American scientists have identified a previously unknown protein that spurs muscle growth and increased power following resistance exercise – such as bodybuilding or weightlifting. The findings are presented in the journal Cell, and the scientists speculate that artificially raising the novel protein's levels might someday help prevent muscle mass loss caused by, for example, cancer, prolonged inactivity in hospital patients, and aging.