News archive

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have discovered how the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, manipulates human proteins to replicate and evade the immune system. The results have been published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

Amaia Calderon-Larrañaga and Weili Xu are recipients of the Elderly and Ageing 2024 Grant from Forte and will both receive funding for the period 2025-2027.

Professor Camilla Björkegren at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Karolinska Institutet, is awarded a distinguished professor grant within natural and engineering sciences by the Swedish Research Council. Out of 83 applications, four grants are awarded to four different universities.

Natalie von der Lehr, science journalist and molecular biologist, visited GPH a few weeks ago and held a workshop on writing popular science summaries, an important component of any grant application. We have summarized the highlights from the workshop and share her best tips below

Rosaria Galanti is Professor Emerita of Epidemiology at GPH, whose research interests include tobacco use and the use of new tobacco-free nicotine products among young people. New products such as white snus are often marketed as 'tobacco-free' despite containing high doses of nicotine, which is produced from tobacco and are often marketed as a fresher alternative to snus with appealing flavours.

In November, Anna Mia Ekström was invited as one of the few external advisors to the Africa CDC’s Continental Research Prioritization Framework Workshop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The workshop aimed to validate a comprehensive set of tools and frameworks designed to enhance health research, identify priority diseases, map research capacities, establish ethical guidelines, and improve governance and coordination of health research across Africa.

During November and December, KI's bachelor programmes representatives participated in three fairs across the country: the Kunskap & Framtid fair in Gothenburg and the Saco Student fair in Kista and Malmö. Tens of thousands of high school graduates attended to get inspiration for their future careers.

Congratulations to the researchers at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (MEB) who received a total of nearly 120 million SEK from the Swedish funding agencies (FORTE, the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Cancer Society and the Erling-Persson Foundation)!

New lecturer at the division of occupational therapy.

Over the past decade, the proportion of residents in Stockholm County who identify as bisexual has nearly doubled. The younger generations are driving the trend and many of them have previously identified as heterosexual. This is according to a study published in JAMA Network Open by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in collaboration with the Centre for Epidemiology and Community Medicine within Region Stockholm in Sweden.

On Friday 13 December, you have the opportunity to experience one of the atmospheric Lucia celebrations that take place at different times and locations around KI.

PhD student Birte Schmid from the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at Karolinska Institutet reflects on her enriching experience at the BonnBrain3 Meeting on "States – Behavior, Neural Circuits and Codes."

Many of KI’s students have similar lives. Studying, hanging out with friends, exercising, and perhaps being involved in the student union or section. For some, the factor of having children is added to the equation. What is it like to study full-time and be a parent at the same time?

”Pioneering physiology and pharmacology to drive next generation discoveries and health care.” - This is FyFa's new vision that is now being launched, together with FyFa's mission. The entire department has been involved in the development.

Congratulations to Daniel Andersson, Jacob Karlsson, Malin Jonsson Fagerlund and Mattias Carlström!

New research from Karolinska Institutet and Columbia University shows that the heart has a mini-brain – its own nervous system that controls the heartbeat. A better understanding of this system, which is much more diverse and complex than previously thought, could lead to new treatments for heart diseases. The study, conducted on zebrafish, is published in Nature Communications.

When you hear the words mucus and snot, you might think of colds, snails or drooling babies. But the runny, sometimes sticky substance often plays a vital role in our lives. And mucus also has potential to be a medicine.

Today, women with oestrogen-sensitive breast cancer receive anti-hormonal therapy. Researchers now show that postmenopausal women with low-risk tumours have a long-term benefit for at least 20 years, while the benefit was more short-term for younger women with similar tumour characteristics who had not yet gone through the menopause. The results are reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI).

Patients with frontotemporal dementia often lack the ability to empathize. A study at Karolinska Institutet has now shown that these patients do not show the same brain activity as healthy individuals when they witness the pain of others, a finding that it is hoped will increase understanding of this specific dementia disease.

On a gray November day, a happy bunch of GPH PhD students visited the Hagströmer Library, KI’s world-class collection of historic medical literature chronicling the emergence of medicine and health sciences in Europe as they exist today.

The Swedish Research Council has awarded seven different grants, including doctoral programme grants within register-based research and project grants for research on antimicrobial resistance. The grant decisions apply to eleven researchers at KI.

At GPH, we currently have 115 doctoral students. Recently, three of our PhD students - Carl Otto Schell, Kritika Dixit, and Bakare Ayobami Adebayo, successfully completed their doctoral studies. In this section, they share their experiences as doctoral students at GPH, discuss their research, the challenges they faced, and their plans for future.

On 12 November, Prof. Manfred Wuhrer from Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands, presented a hybrid Eurolife Distinguished Lecture entitled Glycomics of human immune responses hosted by Karolinska Institutet.

The Swedish Heart Lung Foundation (Hjärt-Lungfonden) has awarded Jonas F. Ludvigsson a 3-year-grant for the project ”Inflammatory bowel disease, inflammation and risk of cardiovascular disease”.

On 26 November an experiment in a sounding rocket was launched at Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, Sweden by a research group at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology (MTC) at Karolinska Institutet. The researchers aims to collect data for a study that examines how a type of immune cell, T cells, are affected by lack of gravity, called microgravity.

KI researchers Emma R. Andersson, Volker Lauschke, Gustaf Edgren and Alireza Salami have been awarded the European Research Council’s prestigious consolidation grant and a total of approximately EUR 8 million (about SEK 90 million) for their research.

A new thesis from Karolinska Institutet shows the significant societal economic burdens posed by two chronic inflammatory gastrointestinal diseases; eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) and microscopic colitis (MC). Both diseases cause long-term inflammation in the digestive system and can lead to additional health problems.

On the occasion of International World AIDS Day, Lars E. Eriksson was invited by Springer Nature to write a 'Behind the Paper' blog post about an article published a few years ago on the development and use of a short scale for measuring stigma among people living with HIV.

Stockholm continues to be an important center for Swedish Parkinson's research. For 2025, the Parkinson's Foundation has decided to provide funding for more than 40 new projects that can help Swedes with Parkinson's disease, of which 14 research projects are conducted at Karolinska Institutet.

Clarivate has unveiled its 2024 list of Highly Cited Researchers, recognizing individuals whose work has had significant global influence in their fields. Lars H. Lund is one of them.

65 researchers at Karolinska Institutet received KID-funding in the call 2024, and twleve of these are active researchers at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge (MedH).

We are diving into a new season of NeurotechEU events for students and staff at the Karolinska Institute.

Are you a programme student at Karolinska Institutet and want to help shape the image of KI for future students? Participate in a short online interview and receive a cinema ticket as compensation.

The location for incoming and outgoing post has been moved and there are new delivery points for packages in Neo.

Professor Eleni Aklillu, GH-Pharma research group leader at the Department of Global Public Health, is leading the coordination of the EU MAV+ project in Rwanda. Sweden is part of the Team Europe initiative with a total budget of €10 million, managed by Sida.

On 29 November, University Director Veronika Sundström held a digital staff meeting for KI's operational services (PS). The meeting covered developments within KI's prioritised focus areas, risk and impact assessments of the decision to reorganise PS, and the status of the project to modernise the PS workplace and working methods. Below is a summary of the information shared.

We congratulate Johan Bjureberg on receiving almost SEK 20 million from VR Behandlingsforskning for the study Preventing Suicide With Safe Alternatives for Teens and Youths (SAFETY): A Randomized Clinical Trial of a Psychosocial Intervention.

The Committee for Doctoral Education at Karolinska Institutet has granted five KID grants to the Division of Neuro (Department of Clinical Neuroscience) for projects focusing on multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease.

The Committee for Research at Karolinska Institutet has granted a total of SEK 1.8 million to the Karolinska Neuroimmunology and Multiple sclerosis network (KNIMS), a consortium of preclinical and clinical scientists who share a common aim to improve the understanding, treatment and healthcare of neuroinflammatory diseases with a special focus on Multiple Sclerosis.

Our goal is for RESPI to continue improving to provide the best possible support. Therefore, we now want to hear our users' opinions on the website, which can give us valuable input for the continued development of RESPI.

Two researchers at the Aging Research Center (ARC) are recipients of the Swedish Research Council’s Project Grant 2024 and will receive funding for the period 2025-2027.

Researchers in Israel have found that (HBOT) may alleviate PTSD, a mental health condition affecting many after traumatic events.

On 24 January 2025, we are organising KI:s Welcome Day. As a KI student, you can apply for the job of Event Host. You will work during the Welcome Day ceremony and fair.

The first annual consortium meeting of the BREEDIME project was recently held in Zanzibar, attracting around 40 participants. Over the two-day event, attendees discussed project milestones, achievements, challenges, and future plans.

Last week, several members of FyFa attended the Metabolism in Action conference, hosted by Novo Nordisk and organized by the Novo Nordisk Foundation Science Cluster. The event brought together leading cardiometabolic researchers and junior scientists to discuss groundbreaking advancements in the field.

Tips from Grants Office regarding current calls

Following a decision taken by KI president Annika Östman Wernerson on 26 November, the Medical History and Heritage Unit (MHK) will be integrated with the Karolinska Institutet University Library (KIB) on 1 January, becoming its own division and with the same management as before.

KI professor Carl Johan Sundberg has been awarded the newly instituted FFF Hall of Fame Prize for his efforts to make science accessible to the public and develop science communication.

IgG4-related disease (IgG4-RD) is a rare autoimmune disease. A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine by the MITIGATE study team found that the drug inebilizumab reduced disease activity and was effective in preventing flares. The drug may therefore be a promising treatment option for the disease.

The Swedish Research Council has decided which applications have been awarded grants in clinical therapy research. In total, more than SEK 233 million will be granted for the years 2024-2027, of which SEK 98.5 million will be awarded to 13 researchers at Karolinska Institutet.