Studying the function of the immune system in respiratory infections
Acute respiratory infections are one of the most common reasons for medical treatment in Sweden and a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Anna Smed Sörensen hopes that a better understanding of the immune system in the airways will make serious disease preventable. Meet one of the new professors of Karolinska Institutet who will participate in this year's installation ceremony at Aula Medica on 3 October.
Text: Karin Tideström, for KI’s installation ceremony booklet 2024
What are you researching?
“We’re researching the immune system in the respiratory passages and its function in the presence of viral infections such as influenza and inflammatory diseases like sarcoidosis. We want to understand why some patients become more severely ill than others so that we can eventually provide more targeted treatment. We hope that by defining patients’ immune profiles early on in the disease trajectory, we’ll be able to predict the severity of the disease."
How are you going about this?
“We gather tissue and fluid samples from different parts of the respiratory system during the entire course of the disease and study in detail the function of immune cells using sophisticated immunological and cell-biological methods.”
Why is this important?
“Acute respiratory infections are one of the main reasons why people seek medical care in Sweden and a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. Our immune system is powerful, which it has to be to fight infection and disease, but if uncontrolled it can lead to tissue damage and exacerbated disease. A better understanding of how the immune response starts and how it’s regulated is crucial to our ability to prevent and treat disease.”
What are your main findings to date?
“During a viral infection of the airways, we can see that the magnitude and quality of the immune response in the upper airways are correlated to the protection against severe disease and risk of re-infection. In the case of sarcoidosis, we’ve seen that patients with a certain type of inflammatory response at diagnosis are more likely to develop chronic disease. We’ve also found that age seems to be an important factor in immune response and illness severity, which is something we currently research in more detail.”
About Anna Smed Sörensen
Professor of Translational Immunology at the Department of Medicine, Solna
Anna Smed Sörensen was born in 1976 in Örebro. She holds a Master’s degree in Biology from Uppsala University and a PhD in experimental medicine from Karolinska Institutet. After graduating, she moved to the USA to conduct her postdoctoral studies at Yale University School of Medicine and the biotech company Genentech, Inc. In 2010, she returned to Karolinka Institutet as assistant professor. She has led a research group since 2014 and in 2015 was made docent of immunology. Anna Smed Sörensen was appointed Professor of Translational Immunology at Karolinska Institutet on 1 April 2024.