News archive

After a spinal cord injury, cells in the brain and spinal cord change to cope with stress and repair tissue. A new study from Karolinska Institutet, published in Nature Neuroscience, shows that this response is controlled by specific DNA sequences. This knowledge could help develop more targeted treatments.

Karolinska Institutet is hosting a symposium focused on how network medicine and artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming how we understand disease, develop therapies, and deliver patient care. The event will bring together leading researchers and clinicians to explore how network-based thinking and modern machine learning are moving biomedicine beyond traditional single-target approaches toward mechanism-based, patient-specific interventions.

Researchers from Karolinska Institutet have discovered how mammalian cells prevent the gradual buildup of harmful mutations in mitochondrial DNA, the small but vital genome that powers every cell. The study, published in Science Advances, explains how mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) maintains its integrity despite its uniparental mode of inheritance and rapid mutation rate.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have discovered how cells can adjust their gene activity to survive when oxygen runs low. The study, published in Nature Cell Biology, reveals that cells use a previously unknown mechanism to control which proteins are produced – and how quickly.

Tilen Trselic, a doctoral student at the Department of Medicine, Solna, has been awarded the 2025 Cilla Weigelt Prize for his research on Sjögren’s syndrome, a rare rheumatic disease that primarily affects women. The prize includes a personal scholarship and a research grant to promote scientific exchange.

RNA is central to how cells function. Through the detailed study of RNA that combines molecular biology with advanced bioinformatics, Vicente Pelechano Garcia hopes to contribute to the development of a new generation of RNA-based treatment and diagnosis. Meet one of the new professors of Karolinska Institutet who will participate in this year's installation ceremony at Aula Medica on 9 October. 

When Per Uhlén was fourteen, he ended up in a wheelchair. Since then, he has become a professor, started three companies, and competed in two Paralympic Games. “Sometimes I feel like my life is a film,” he says.

It is the spread of tumours, metastases, which is the usual cause of cancer-related death. Jonas Fuxe researchers the mechanisms driving this process, with a focus on how cancer cells interact with their surroundings and mutate in order to take new paths. Meet one of the new professors of Karolinska Institutet who will participate in this year's installation ceremony at Aula Medica on 9 October.

Schizophrenia is a disease that causes great suffering, but today’s methods of treatment are inadequate in dealing with it. Jens Hjerling-Leffler studies what happens in the brain during the phase of life in which the disease often debuts in the hope of promoting the development of more effective drugs. Meet one of the new professors of Karolinska Institutet who will participate in this year's installation ceremony at Aula Medica on 9 October.

Two new studies from Karolinska Institutet have investigated how mutations that occur in muscles and blood vessels over time can affect ageing. The studies, which are published in Nature Aging, show that such mutations can reduce muscle strength and accelerate blood vessel ageing. The results can be of significance to the treatment of age-related diseases.

A study in the journal Science presents compelling new evidence that neurons in the brain’s memory centre, the hippocampus, continue to form well into late adulthood. The research from Karolinska Institutet provides answers to a fundamental and long-debated question about the human brain’s adaptability.

The delicate balance between cell death and regeneration is crucial for human health and longevity. Most mechanisms involved in programmed cell death (PCD) play a key role in normal tissue renewal and repair after injury. At the same time, PCD can also disrupt regenerative processes, contributing to the development of pathological conditions such as cancer, fibrosis, neurodegenerative diseases, and other age-related disorders.

Björn Reinius and Joyce Noble have developed a synthetic protection for RNA molecules that is stable and can be stored at room temperature. Their innovation simplifies aspects of biomedical research and enables new analytical methods. They are now awarded the 2025 Prize for innovation and utilisation for their work.

In a study published in Nature, researchers at Karolinska Institutet and SciLifeLab, among others, have identified a new mechanism for how cells deal with stress. This could have implications for treating certain hereditary, neurodegenerative diseases, but may also be relevant for future cancer treatment.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Helmholtz Munich, among others, have developed a user-friendly portal with comprehensive data on human adipose tissue. The portal offers researchers and clinicians an opportunity to explore the biology of adipose tissue, right down to the individual cell level, without any requirement for knowledge in bioinformatics. The study is published in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Professor Anna Wredenberg wants to understand in detail how the body works. That is why she delves into the unknown world of mitochondria. For patients with hereditary genetic diseases, this could mean a long-awaited diagnosis.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have mapped how small RNA molecules, such as the recently Nobel Prize-awarded microRNAs, control cell development in the human embryo during the first days after fertilisation. The findings, published in Nature Communications, may eventually contribute to improved fertility treatment.

Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun share this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. They are being awarded for their discovery of microRNAs, which play a crucial role in the development of complex organisms. Research is underway at Karolinska Institutet on how these small molecules can be applied clinically.

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has decided to award the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.

Our fat cells not only store energy, they are also involved in many physiological processes. Kirsty Spalding researches how dysfunctional fat cells impact health and disease in humans. Meet one of the new professors of Karolinska Institutet who will participate in this year's installation ceremony at Aula Medica on 3 October.

Mitochondrial diseases are inherited and often affect children. With no effective treatment currently available, Anna Wredenberg hopes to discover more about mitochondrial function in order to improve both diagnosis and treatment. Meet one of the new professors of Karolinska Institutet who will participate in this year's installation ceremony at Aula Medica on 3 October.

New findings from an international collaborative project highlight the pivotal role of TRP14 in health and disease.

KI researcher Rickard Sandberg has been elected as a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Academy of Sciences in the Medical Sciences category. In his research, he has developed new methods for studying genes in individual cells.

New research reveals that scar formation after spinal cord injuries is more complex than previously thought. Scientists have identified two types of perivascular cells as key contributors to scar tissue, which hinders nerve regeneration and functional recovery. These findings, published in Natural Neuroscience, are also relevant for other brain and spinal cord injuries and could lead to targeted therapies for reducing scarring and improving outcomes.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have developed a web-based platform that provides a whole new insight into the human body at the cellular level. The aim is to create an invaluable resource for researchers worldwide to increase knowledge about human health and disease. The study is published in Genome Biology.

After the egg has been fertilized by a sperm, the surrounding egg coat tightens, mechanically preventing the entry of additional sperm and the ensuing death of the embryo. This is according to a new study led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and published in the journal Cell. The work also explains how mutations in egg coat proteins can cause female infertility and may eventually lead to new contraceptive methods.

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.

A new method, developed at Karolinska Institutet, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and SciLifeLab, can identify unique immune cell receptors and their location in tissue, a study published in the journal Science reports. The researchers predict that the method will improve the ability to identify which immune cells contribute to disease processes and open up opportunities to develop novel therapies for numerous diseases.

Alexandra Argyriou, doctoral student at the Department of Medicine, Solna and Mireia Cruz De los Santos, doctoral student at the Department of Oncology and Pathology, have been awarded the Cilla Weigelt Scholarship for outstanding research in molecular mechanisms related to rare and under-treated diseases. The scholarships, 50,000 SEK each, will be awarded on November 13.

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.

Cardiogenic growth factors play important roles in heart development and in a new study published in the scientific paper Nature Communications from researchers at Karolinska Institutet shows how stem cell therapeutics and mRNA technology are beginning to converge offering major improvements in vascularization, survival, expansion, differentiation, and ultimately the function of human stem cell grafts.

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.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have identified a group of nerve cells in the mouse brain that are involved in creating negative emotional states and chronic stress. The neurons, which have been mapped with a combination of advanced techniques, also have receptors for oestrogen, which could explain why women as a group are more sensitive to stress than men. The study is published in Nature Neuroscience.

Solving the logic of life. This may seem like an overwhelming task. But for Professor Rickard Sandberg, this is the objective.

Our skin contains specialised long-lived killer cells that protect against intruders. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and the University of Copenhagen have now identified how these cells are formed, and shown that high levels of memory killer cells in cancer tissue correlate with a better survival rate in people with melanoma. The study is published in the journal Immunity.

The 5D Heart Patch Project, led by Prof Kenneth Chien, has identified human ventricular progenitor (HVP) cells that can create self-assembling heart grafts in vivo. The research has the potential to offer hope to millions of people suffering from heart failure.

A hitherto unknown mechanism for DNA folding is described in a study in Nature published by researchers from Karolinska Institutet and the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics. Their findings provide new insights into chromosomal processes that are vital to both normal development and to prevent disease.

In a recently published article published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Professor Yihai Cao’s research group at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, charts the information about drug development for the treatment of a number of human diseases by targeting new blood vessel formation.

Three professors at Karolinska Institutet – Gonçalo Castelo-Branco, Maria Eriksson and Björn Högberg – have been awarded ERC Advanced Grants, one of the most prestigious and competitive EU funding schemes. The funds, totaling more than 8 million euros, will support the use of innovative basic research methods to further our understanding of disease mechanisms and the tiniest building blocks of DNA.

A new study published in Nature reports that a technology known as spatial omics can be used to map simultaneously how genes are switched on and off and how they are expressed in different areas of tissues and organs. This improved technology, developed by researchers at Yale University and Karolinska Institutet, could shed light on the development of tissues, as well as on certain diseases and how to treat them.

KI Professor Rickard Sandberg has been awarded the Torsten Söderberg Academy Professorship in Medicine by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, a donation of 10 million Swedish kronor for a five-year period. Rickard Sandberg has developed methods that make it possible to deeply penetrate the human genome by studying genes in individual cells.

Two KI researchers – Simon Elsässer and Magda Bienko – have been awarded 2022 European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grants totaling four million euro (nearly 45 million Swedish kronor). The funds will support two ambitious basic research projects that aim to further our understanding of the complex nature of our cells.

Nano-sized membrane bubbles known as extracellular vesicles activate the immune system in mice and seem to render their tumours sensitive to a type of immunotherapy drug called a checkpoint inhibitor. This is according to a new study published in Cancer Immunology Research by researchers at Karolinska Institutet.

Losing too much weight when infected with COVID-19 has been linked to worse outcomes. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have discovered that SARS-CoV-2 infection fuels blood vessel formation in fat tissues, thus revving up the body’s thermogenic metabolism. Blocking this process by using an existing drug curbed weight loss in mice and hamsters that were infected with the virus, according to the study published in the journal Nature Metabolism.

Among patients with kidney cancer, the activity of four specific genes in the cancer cells seems to be able to predict the risk of the tumour spreading and the patient’s chances of survival. This is shown by researchers from Karolinska Institutet in a preclinical study published in Nature Communications.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet present new insights into the role of small molecules, microRNAs, in skin wound healing. The study, published in the journal eLife, highlights possible future approaches for treating venous ulcers, a common type of chronic non-healing wounds.

A study from Karolinska Institutet, among others, presents the theory that egg-sperm fusion, a crucial feature of sexual reproduction in plants and animals, may have originated from an ancient form of genetic exchange that involved the fusion of bacteria-like microorganisms called archaea. The results, published in Nature Communications, may open an entirely new perspective on the evolution of sex.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden show how a molecule that they have identified stimulates the formation of new insulin-producing cells in zebrafish and mammalian tissue, through a newly described mechanism for regulating protein synthesis. The results are published in Nature Chemical Biology.

New findings reveal an advanced, unexpected two-way communication between the function and organization of chromosomes in the cell nucleus. Previous research shows that the organization of chromosomal DNA into loops regulates gene reading (transcription) and chromosome copying (replication). The new results show that, in turn, transcription and replication control chromosome looping, thus revealing a new interplay known to be important in avoiding diseases, such as cancer.

Measuring the full complement of small molecules (the metabolome) can provide important insight into the health status of an individual. The measurement of metabolites is also the main theme of the recently established KI core facility for small molecule mass spectrometry (KI-SMMS). We talk with Craig Wheelock, Head of the newly founded Unit of Integrative Metabolomics in the Institute of Environmental Medicine (IMM), about the role of metabolomics in personalized health care.