Several research grants to Center for Infectious Medicine
Just before Christmas, CIM received several major research grants to their research about infectious medicine.
Jenny Mjösberg and Niklas Björkström receives extended funding from KI and Benedict Chambers and Malin Flodström-Tullberg receives funding from Vetenskapsrådet (VR). Funding from Cancerfonden have been assigned six persons: Niklas Björkström, Benedict Chambers, Hans Gustaf Ljunggren, Karl-Johan Malmberg, Jakob Michaelsson och Johan Sandberg.
Malin Flodström-Tullberg and Jakob Michaelsson also receives funding from Hjärt-Lungfonden.
More about the research on the respective research group page
Benedict Chambers received funding from both Vetenskapsrådet and Cancerfonden
Tell us about your research!
– My research investigates how cells of the innate immune system react to pathogens or tumors and how these reactions can affect adaptive immune responses.
– My research is looking at within the immune system activating and inhibiting molecules that can be expressed on cells during infection or on cancer cells. Many of the activating ligands can be expressed on cell during infection and help fight against infections. However cancer cells utilise inhibitory receptors to evade the immune system. We have been using tumor models of melanoma, sarcoma and lymphoma to study how these tumors or the milieu within the tumors can potentially affect the expression of inhibitory or activating receptors on for example tumor infiltrating NK cells and T cells, says Benedict Chambers.
What is the main purpose of your research?
– Most of the time we are trying to understand how activating and inhibiting molecules control innate immune cells. The molecules can be on the cells themselves but more recently we have started to examine how bacteria metabolites can affect immune cells.
What did you do before you started at KI?
– I did my bachelors degree at University College Dublin and my PhD at University of Connecticut investigated how autoantibodies to laminin could cause miscarriages. And after that 20+ years at KI.