News archive

Vicente Pelechano Garcia at the Department of Microbiology, Tumour and Cell Biology is one of two researchers to be awarded a Swedish Foundations’ Starting Grant. The grant is arranged jointly by five private research foundations and is awarded to young research group leaders who achieved a top grade and proceeded to the interview stage of their ERC Starting Grant application but did not make it all the way.

KI researcher Georg Klein passed away on 10 December 2016. He was professor emeritus of tumour biology at Karolinska Institutet, and a researcher at the Department of Microbiology, Tumour and Cell Biology (MTC). He was, among other things, a member of the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet and in later years became known as an author and award-winning essayist.

Two MTC researchers have been appointed Wallenberg Academy Fellows, an appointment that includes funding for between 5 to 9 million SEK per researcher for a five year period

Seven young researchers connected to Karolinska Institutet have been appointed Wallenberg Academy Fellows 2016. The purpose of this program, funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, is to boost Sweden as a research nation by retaining the greatest research talents in the country and by recruiting young international researchers to Swedish universities.

Depression is the predominant mental disease and constitutes the most common cause of morbidity in developed countries. Now researchers at Karolinska Institutet have managed to find a connection between development of depression and the existence of an enzyme in the brain of the fetus.

Professor Emeritus Folke Sjöqvist and newly appointed Professor Nagihan Bostanci followed different paths to Karolinska Institutet. One became a professor within a brand new research field and the other changed countries when she was appointed professor at Karolinska Institutet.

Opinions have varied on how many professors Karolinska Institutet is to have. The first change took place in 1993, when over a hundred “kingdoms” were abolished.

Since 2011 universities and institutions of higher education in Sweden have had greater freedom to decide themselves on the appointment of a professor. Karolinska Institutet has chosen to expose professorships to competition and has abolished the right to be promoted.

The Erling-Persson Family Foundation has awarded a large grant to a KTH project where OnkPat's Rolf Lewensohn and Kristina Viktorsson have key roles.

Among women with high-risk early breast cancer, the use of tailored dose-dense chemotherapy compared with standard adjuvant chemotherapy did not result in a statistically significant improvement in breast cancer recurrence-free survival, and nonhematologic toxic effects were more frequent in the tailored dose-dense group, according to a study appearing in the November 8 issue of JAMA.

Henrik Wagner, at the group Growth and Metabolism, will defend his thesis "Factors potentially influencing pathogenetic mechanisms and hyperglycemia in pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes : clinical studies in human" on November 11, 2016. Main supervisor is Associate Professor Michael Alvarsson.

Previous experiments have raised concerns that general anaesthetics and surgery for infants increases the risk of learning difficulties and sub-standard school performance. New research presented in the international journal JAMA Pediatrics now suggests that these fears are unwarranted.

Global figures betray a worrying situation. At the same time, it appears the world has woken up. Our PopSci magazine, Medicinsk Vetenskap, has taken the temperature of the fight against antibiotic resistance.

Last Thursday (27 October), the Swedish Research Council announced the grants it will be awarding in the category of medicine and health. The total sum is almost SEK 980 million, of which KI researchers will receive SEK 524,325,017.

Professor Carol Tishelman has just received the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award from the European Oncology Nursing Society (EONS) for a lifetime commitment to cancer prevention.

The research group SOLIID at the Medical Management Centre (MMC) at the Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics has been awarded a research grant from Vinnova for a project presenting new approaches to support innovative development in large healthcare organizations.

Jan Albert is featured on Sveriges Radio in a program about the spread of HIV in the 1970s.

Professor Per-Olof Berggren has been appointed Distinguished Professor at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy.

Professor Hans Hertz at KTH (as main applicant) and Professor Marie Arsenian Henriksson at MTC and Professor Muhammet Toprak at KTH (as co-applicants) have received a grant for 33 090 000 SEK from The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. The grant is for their project entitled ”Molecular X-Ray Micro Imaging” and will cover a five year period.

Per-Olof Berggren, Professor of Experimental Endocrinology at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, Karolinska Institutet, has been elected as member of the National Academy of Medicine, NAM.

Maria Albin researches how the environments in which we work and live affect our health. She is particularly interested in issues relating to sustainability – what work content and employment conditions are needed for people to continue enjoying what they do.

To understand the interaction between virulent organisms and the immune system, we need to know what the proteins involved actually look like – that is, what three-dimensional structures they have. This is the objective of Adnane Achour’s research, his main objects of interest being the immune system’s T cells and the bacterium Streptococcus pneumoniae.