News archive

Caroline Ingre receives a Royal grant

The Strategic Research Area Neuroscience, StratNeuro, awards a total of 6,400,000 SEK to support new technologies and methods to study the nervous system.

The Strategic Research Area Neuroscience, StratNeuro, announces up to ten grants to support postdoctoral researchers at Karolinska Institutet.

The Swedish Kidney Foundation (Njurfonden) distributes more than SEK 7 million to research into kidney diseases. This is the largest sum since the fund was established and is awarded to 40 researchers, 19 of whom are active at Karolinska Institutet. The grants go to research related to chronic kidney disease, dialysis and transplantation.

KI researcher Laura Baranello has been awarded the prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant for her researches into the interaction between the cancer-driving protein MYC and topoisomerase enzymes. Her aim is to identify drugs for more targeted cancer therapy with fewer side-effects. Laura Baranello’s MYCinTOPshape project has been awarded approximately EUR 2 million to be spread over five years.

Amaia Calderón-Larrañaga has been awarded the SFOepi consolidator bridging grant for the project entitled "Multimorbidity and kidney function in old age: longitudinal trajectories and synergistic effects". The amount granted is SEK 3,600,000 for the period 2023-2025.

Eva Åhrén, operations director of the Hagströmer Library and KI’s Medical History and Heritage, has been awarded a project grant of SEK 5 million by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. The grant is intended to support efforts to make KI’s academic heritage accessible for the purposes of research, education and outreach.

The European Research Council (ERC) awards a Starting Grant to promising young investigators in a variety of research fields, to kick off their careers. Alessandro Furlan, Assistant Professor at the Department of Neuroscience, who investigates how the brain and body work together to regulate critical physiological processes, is one of the early-stage scientists to be awarded this five-year grant.

Following an internal evaluation of the proposals, the StratNeuro board has decided to award SEK 100,000 to the proposal sent by Onur Dagliyan at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, to host a two months' visit in his laboratory by Cristian Ripoli, Associate Professor at the Department of Neuroscience of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy.

Professor Per-Olof Berggren has been awarded a ERC Proof of Concept grant by the European Research Council (ERC). The funding will be used to advance a technology in which islets of Langerhans are transplanted into the anterior chamber of the eye and employed as a screening tool to identify novel pharmaceutical treatments for diabetes.

In clinical studies, new methods and treatments are tested on humans under controlled conditions. However, clinical treatment studies are often very expensive to carry out and require resources that allow many different professional groups to work together. The Swedish Cancer Society has now decided on an extra allocation of grants to ten researchers for clinical studies. Six of these are researchers at Karolinska Institutet.

Helena Karlström, senior lecturer at the Division of Neurogeriatrics is awarded 250 000 Euro (approximately 2,8 million SEK) from the Dutch Brain Foundation for the project ”NOTCH3 immunotherapy to target toxic protein aggregation in CADASIL”.
In addition, she receives 3,6 million SEK from the European Joint program – Rare Diseases (EJP-RD) for the project ”CADASIL-Naturliga sjukdomsförloppet ”.

The Swedish Childhood Cancer Fund's allocation reflects the needs that exist in areas such as new technology and precision medicines. This year's call for proposals means that SEK 125 million will be allocated to 62 projects in the field of childhood cancer, of which SEK 35,400,000 will go to researchers at Karolinska Institutet.

The Swedish Research Council has awarded project grants for international collaborations in rare diseases (EJP RD). Of the seven researchers awarded grants, four are researchers at Karolinska Institutet.

Eight researchers at the Department of Neuroscience have been awarded project grants from the Swedish Research Council in the category of medicine and health.

Professor Johan Ärnlöv receives SEK 7,5 million in the call Research competence in primary care 2023. He receives the grant for his project "Chronic pain and the development of cardiovascular diseases". Congratulations!

The Swedish Research Council has decided on the applications to be awarded grants within clinical therapy research. In total, almost SEK 210 million is granted for the years 2023-2027 to 28 researchers. Ten of them are researchers at Karolinska Institutet.

Professor Gonçalo Castelo-Branco and Professor Jonas Frisén, Karolinska Institutet, are awarded distinguished professor grants from the Swedish Research Council, totalling just over SEK 62 million for the years 2024–2031.

KI researcher Goran Papenberg has been granted a project grant from the Swedish Research Council for his research on the brain's ability to produce new neurons and its relevance for long-term memory and depression in aging.

Of the 31 researchers appointed Wallenberg Academy Fellow this year, five will be active at Karolinska Institutet. The five-year grant is awarded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation and provides young, promising research leaders with long-term research funding in Sweden.

In the latest Swedish Research Council (VR) call, a total of SEK 660,747,160 has been granted to 143 KI researchers, an increase on last year’s SEK 625,904,933. All in all, VR granted SEK 1.37 billion in 2023, compared with 1.2 billion in 2022.

KI-researcher Pauliina Damdimopoulou has been awarded a EUR 2 million ERC Consolidator Grant (European Research Council) for the SAFER project (SAfeguarding female FERtility-development of human-relevant in vitro tools for reproductive toxicity). The research will investigate the impact of commonly occurring environmental chemical contaminants on women's reproductive health. The grant is awarded under Horizon Europe, the EU's programme for research and innovation.

KI researcher Volker Lauschke has received the Swedish Research Council's Consolidation Grant for the research project "Modulation of Tissue Communication to Combat Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease" regarding the severe liver disease NASH. The Swedish Research Council's Consolidation Grant amounts to 7.4 million SEK over five years. This marks the fifth time Volker Lauschke has been awarded funding from the Swedish Research Council.

We congratulate the ten researchers at MedH who have been awarded grants from the Swedish Cancer Society (Cancerfonden) for the period 2024-2026. Together, the MedH researchers are awarded grants of just over SEK 33 million.

We wish to congratulate the six researchers at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition (BioNut) at Karolinska Institutet, who has received funding from Cancerfonden for the years 2024 to 2026. Together the researchers at our department received more than SEK 21 millions.

The Consolidator Grant within Medicine and Health from the Swedish Research Council has been awarded to Georgios Sotiriou at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology at Karolinska Institutet. The project aims to develop a holistic therapy of chronic wounds using nanoengineered solutions.

Congratulations to the researchers at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society (NVS) who were awarded grants from The Swedish Research Council in the call for Medicine and Health 2023. Together they received in total 19,2 million SEK.

Neuroförbundet distributes close to SEK 14 million to three ALS research projects. The research should contribute to better nursing, new medicines and precision medicines.

KI researcher Stefan Skare receives funding from Barncancerfonden (the Swedish Childhood Cancer Fund) for the development of motion-robust MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) methods for examining awake children with brain and spinal cord tumors. The project receives a total of SEK 3.9 million over three years.

Congratulations to Kristiina Tammimies, Eric Herlenius, Ulrika Ådén and Jakob Stenman, researchers at the Department of women's and children's health, who receive funding from the Swedish Research Council's call for proposals in medicine and health in 2023.

In the Swedish Research Council (VR) latest call for medicine and health and natural and engineering sciences 2023, research grants of 26 197 750 SEK were distributed to six researchers at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics for the years 2023-2028.

Congratulations to the eight researchers at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition (BioNut), Karolinska Institutet, who have received grants from the Swedish Research Council. Together they received more than SEK 27 million in total.

SSMF (Swedish Society for Medical Research) is aimed at researchers in all fields of medicine and supports basic research as well as applied research. In the autumn of 2023, seven researchers from Karolinska Institutet have been awarded grants.

In the Swedish Research Council's (VR) latest call for medicine and health 2023, research grants of 49 645 000 SEK were distributed to 11 researchers at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, for the years 2023-2028.

KI researchers Anders Kvanta and Fredrik Lanner have been awarded a grant of SEK 10 million from the Erling-Persson Foundation for a clinical phase 1 trial on macular degeneration, a common age-related eye disease. By transplanting retinal cells from embryonic stem cells, the researchers hope to curb any further loss of vision and ultimately recover lost sight.

MedTechLabs has granted SEK 35 million for two new medical technology research programmes. One will develop a new method for monitoring foetal oxygenation during labour. The other will develop a new method for early diagnosis of brain diseases using MR-Elastography.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet are awarded close to SEK 93 million in Forte's annual open call for proposals. The projects, which will run until 2027, span all of Forte's areas - health, working life and welfare. This year, a total of 20 projects at KI have been granted funding.

In the Swedish Research Council's latest call, SEK 69 000 000 was awarded to 12 researchers at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge (MedH) for the years 2023-2028.

A researcher at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition, Karolinska Institutet, has received SEK 4.97 million in research grants from FORTE for a project on “A mHealth intervention to promote healthy lifestyle behaviours from the start of life: The Health4Life trial”.

The EPIC project (Eukaryotic Post-TranscrIptional Code) has been awarded a ERC Synergy Grant of EUR 10 million to be shared by Vicente Pelechano, Karolinska Institutet, and his two partners Kevin Verstrepen, VIB-KU Leuven, Belgium, and Julien Gagneur, Technical University of Munich, Germany.

The project CartoHostBug (Funtional cartography of intestinal host-microbiome interactions) has been awarded an ERC Synergy Grant of EUR 10 million, which is shared between four researchers, among them Eduardo Villablanca, senior researcher at Karolinska Institutet. The aim of the project is to map how disturbances in the gut microbiome can lead to inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer.

The project D2Smell (Digitising Smell: From Natural Statistics of Olfactory Perceptual Space to Digital Transmission of Odors) has been awarded an ERC Synergy Grant of EUR 11.8 million, which is shared between three researchers: Johan Lundström, Karolinska Institutet, Noam Sobel, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, and Jonathan Williams, Max Planck Society, Germany. The interdisciplinary collaboration aims to digitally transfer scents to recreate them in another location.

We wish to congratulate Professor Eckardt Treuter, at the Department of Biosciences and Nutriton, Karolinska Institutet, who has received the Novo Nordisk Foundation Project Grant in Endocrinology & Metabolism 2023, for a project on "Role of monocyte enhancers and silencers in inflammatory type 2 diabetes" (2 years, DKK 2 million).

New technologies open new possibilities for groundbreaking research. StratNeuro aims to support the development and dissemination of new technologies and therefore announces a new funding call.

Researchers at the Ageing Research Centre have been awarded a number of grants from Demensfonden, Stiftelsen Sigurd och Elsa Goljes minne, Stiftelsen Ragnhild och Einar Lundströms minne, as well as the SfoEpi Consolidator grant, for studies on the health and well-being of older people. In addition, ARC is involved in a project within preventive and health-promoting interventions that has been granted funding from Forte.

Two researchers at Karolinska Institutet have been awarded ERC Starting Grants, totalling 3 million euro over five years. Kasper Karlsson and Juan Pablo Lopez will each receive EUR 1.5 million for projects that aim to fight cancer in children and understand how psychedelic compounds can be used to treat psychiatric disorders.

According to UNICEF, approximately one in five young people suffer from mental health issues, which in turn often leads to risk-taking with alcohol, tobacco and drugs. In the long run, it can cause lifelong health impairments in adulthood. In a three-year project coordinated by Karolinska Institutet, a method used to improve young people’s wellbeing in India, Kenya, the U.S. and Colombia is being evaluated to see if it can work in other parts of the world.

Each year, the Swedish Brain Foundation supports qualified research on the brain and other nervous systems, as well as diseases, injuries, and disabilities throughout the nervous system. Andrea Carmine Belin runs one of the 44 research projects at Karolinska Institutet that have been awarded this year's research grant from the Swedish Brain Foundation.

At its meeting of 22 June, the government made the decision to stop all grants disbursed by the Swedish Research Council itemised as development research, effectively pulling the plug on a great deal of planned research in the field. Researchers in the sector have protested publicly against the decision, which has also been condemned by KI president Annika Östman Wernerson.

Five researchers at Karolinska Institutet are awarded 30 million Swedish kronor from the Swedish Research Council (VR) to establish a so-called centre of excellence for further development of cell-based cancer treatments. The funds will be distributed over five years, with the potential for another five years of funding after evaluation.