News archive

Are you planning an event for the fall of 2024 being aimed at the public? Schedule it between 4 to 14 October and be a part of Nobel Calling Stockholm! Nobel Calling Stockholm offers inspiring events and educational meetings in the spirit of knowledge.

The discoveries of Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman made possible the first COVID-19 vaccine. But it was just one of the many things that can be done with mRNA, explained the Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine in their Nobel lectures.

As part of the Nobel Week, KI students were invited to a lecture on Alfred Nobel and on Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, this year's laureates in Medicine or Physiology. Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the Nobel Assembly and the Nobel Committee, shared his experiences of both the nomination process and calling surprised laureates in the middle of the night.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded this year to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, whose research gave rise to effective mRNA vaccines that contained the COVID pandemic and saved millions of lives. A well-deserved honour, according to Karolinska Institutet.

The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.

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.

When Svante Pääbo talked about the importance of Neanderthals, the audience in Aula Medica listened carefully. The Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine explained, among other things, that we carry their genes and that they may have been more sensitive than we think.

Svante Pääbo hasn’t even collected his 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine yet. Still, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology is already dreaming of making new ground-breaking discoveries.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to K. Barry Sharpless, Morten Meldal and Carolyn R. Bertozzi for the development of click chemistry, a quick and efficient way to build molecules. Several KI researchers use the technology in their daily research, one of which has co-authored a study with one of this year's prize winners. Here, they comment on the prize.

Where do we originate from? And who are we? Thanks to Svante Pääbo, 2022 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, we know more about what make us uniquely human. We also know what we have in common with our, now-extinct, closest relatives.

From pregnancies and depression to COVID-19. Neanderthals are physically extinct, but their genes live on. For better or worse, they still affect our health today. We are publishing this timeline, previously published in the magazine Medicinsk Vetenskap, due to the fact that researcher Svante Pääbo has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2022.

Many people were delighted to hear that Professor Svante Pääbo has been awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, particularly so Hugo Zeberg, researcher at Karolinska Institutet. He has collaborated with Svante Pääbo for years, not least on the work to find Neanderthal genes that can influence how ill different people become after contracting the COVID-19 virus.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2022 has been awarded to Svante Pääbo for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution.

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry rewards Benjamin List and David MacMillan for a new and ingenious tool for building molecules, asymmetric organocatalysis, which has contributed to more environmentally friendly chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing. Here, KI researcher Per I Arvidsson, Head of the Drug Discovery and Development Platform at SciLifeLab, comments on the discovery. He was one of those who introduced organocatalysis in Sweden and believes that the prize was expected.

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is about how people can feel temperature and touch. The discoveries explain basic functions in our lives and have opened doors to new treatments for pain, for example. We take it for granted, the fact that we can feel an icy wind, a hot plate or a hug, but how this actually works was unknown until it was discovered by the Nobel Laureates, a discovery made not so long ago.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021 has been awarded jointly to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian “for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.”

The discovery of the hepatitis C virus is this year acknowledged by The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. It is now possible to detect the virus in blood and to provide an effective treatment for the infection. WHO wants to eliminate hepatitis C by 2030, but is this possible? We asked three researchers what they think.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences have decided to award the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for the development of a method for genome editing. Here, KI researchers who uses the method in their own research comment on this year’s prize. “It’s what we’ve been waiting for,” says Fredrik Lanner.

The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus. Thanks to the work of the laureates, it is now possible to detect the virus in blood and to provide an effective treatment for the infection. It has saved the lives of millions of people. The prize also focuses on the importance of research into viruses.

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton, and Charles M. Rice for their discoveries of the Hepatitis C virus.

When Nobel prize winner Michael Kremer initially looked at the data of his now famous 1990s Kenya school study, he felt shocked and disappointed. The data showed that more textbooks did nothing to improve educational outcomes, contrary to what most researchers believed. But rather than succumbing to disillusionment, Kremer dug deeper into Kenya’s schooling system to uncover what measures truly did make an impact and found his answer: targeted help for weak students.

In three brilliant Nobel Lectures, the laureates describe how research into the systems cells use to deal with hypoxia can lead to improved treatments for anaemia, vascular atrophy and cancer.

The winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2019 have explained a vital ability – how cells adapt to the availability of oxygen. These discoveries have opened the door to new strategies for combating anaemia, cancer and many other diseases and are now being investigated further at institutions including Karolinska Institutet.

Congratulations to Lennart Ilke, senior adviser at Karolinska Institutet’s Property and Facilities Office! He now also has the distinction of having translated to Swedish one of the books by the Polish winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in literature, Olga Tokarczuk.

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to William G. Kaelin Jr, Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine recognizes the discovery that it is possible to treat cancer by inhibiting the brakes on the immune system. Behind their discovery lies a bold idea and eager basic research, which has led to an entirely new principle for cancer therapy and new medicines that have already been approved. Many factors contribute to rapid developments in this field—in particular, current research at Karolinska Institutet.

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation.

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.

In the 1990s, Yoshinori Ohsumi described how our cells keep their house in order. Now that he has been awarded a Nobel Prize for his discoveries, the research field has exploded – cellular waste management has proved to be critical to cancer and many other diseases.

Nobel Week is soon to come, bringing together all the Nobel Laureates in Stockholm. One of them, Tomas Lindahl, one of this year's three Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, made many of his pioneering discoveries at Karolinska Institutet.

The 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar for having mapped, at a molecular level, how cells repair damaged DNA and safeguard the genetic information. Tomas Lindahl made these crucial discoveries, for which he is now being rewarded, at Karolinska Institutet.