The Division of Neuro

On March 20, Caroline Ingre received a grant from the Royal foundation, supporting and acknowledging ALS research conducted in Sweden.

You are a student at the Karolinska Institutet and you want to boost your CV, have amazing networking opportunities, while benefiting from high quality lectures?
Then come and volunteer at the 2024 ENCALS conference, the largest European conference on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

Susanna Brauner and Fredrik Piehl are awarded SEK 2,400,000 each for the project “Characterization and optimization of the course of care in myasthenia gravis".

Vinnova is to finance the project "For efficient and sustainable use of health data through the integration of the DIGITAL-projects and GMS in Sweden (DIGIfor1healthSE)" with a grant of SEK 12 million over a period of four years. Daniel Lundqvist at the Division of Neuro is leading the Swedish leg of TEF-Health.

Professor Robert A. Harris is made honorary doctorate at the Iuliu Hatieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy (UMF) Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The honour is given in recognition of Bob Harris’ exceptional contributions to the development of the university, especially in the context of the European University Alliance NeurotechEU project

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

The Docent Committee decided on the 24 of August 2023 to admit Rayomand Press and Chartih Cooray, both affiliated with the Division of Neuro at CNS, as docents in neurologi.

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.

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.

Medical student Julie Cheung from Karolinska Institutet (KI), affiliated with Eric Thelin's research group, recently won first prize at the prestigious Global Undergraduate Awards thesis competition in the category of Medical Sciences.

University of Bergen in collaboration with researchers at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet, have been awarded a significant grant funded by Horizon Europe with €7 million during 2024-2028 in recognition of their dedication to target Epstein-Barr virus to treat and prevent Multiple Sclerosis.

On July 1, 2023, our research group leader Karin Jensen was employed as professor at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience (CNS).

Nature Communications has published a new study by researchers from Per Svenningsson's research group at the Division of Neuro.
The results of the study provide increased mechanistic understanding of how Parkinsonism occurs and show that increased levels of prosaposin can counteract Parkinsonism and is a new candidate for drug development. 

Link to the publication:
"Prosaposin maintains lipid homeostasis in dopamine neurons and counteracts experimental parkinsonism in rodents"

A new study in Nature by an international team including researchers at Karolinska Institutet has identified the first genetic variant associated with disease severity in multiple sclerosis. Ingrid Kockum at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, and principal investigator for the European part of the study, says that this gives us an opportunity to develop new treatments to control progression, which is urgently needed by so many people suffering from MS.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet, Olivia Thomas and Mattias Bronge in Hans Grönlund's research group, have found further evidence for how the Epstein-Barr virus can trigger multiple sclerosis or drive disease progression.

Tomas Olsson at the Division of Neuro has been ranked as #35 by the leading academic platform Research.com of the country's top researchers in 2023 in the medical field. This is the highest ranking in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet, the Centre for Imaging Research (CIR), SciLifeLab, and RISE have together received a grant of over SEK 100 million from the European Commission's Digital Europe programme. The project, called TEF-Health, will, among other things, promote the rapid introduction of new artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics solutions in healthcare.

On October 4, 2022, our research group leader Niaz Ahmed was employed as an adjunct professor at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, CNS, the Division of Neuro.

Karolinska Institutet has signed a collaboration agreement with the European research infrastructure EBRAINS, which offers digital tools and services for research into the brain. The purpose of this agreement is to give KI's researchers access to new digital technology and state-of-the-art resources, as well as the opportunity to contribute to the further development of the area of neuroscience within the EU.

The national MEG lab at Karolinska Institutet is already the only lab in Sweden with equipment to measure neuronal brain activity in real time across the entire brain. Now, a new sensor-system upgrade to its technical equipment will make the lab an international leader in the field.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden might have found an explanation for why people with self-injury behaviour generally feel less pain than others. The key seems to be a more effective pain-modulation system, a discovery that can benefit people seeking help for their self-harm. The findings are published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

Currently available therapies to treat multiple sclerosis (MS) lack precision and can lead to serious side effects. Researchers at KI have now developed a method for identifying the immune cells involved in autoimmune diseases, and have identified four new target molecules of potential significance for future personalised treatment of MS. 
Working alongside Professor Tomas Olsson’s research group at Karolinska Institutet, Grönlund and his team at the Division of Neuro have developed a method that makes it possible to identify the T cells that react to certain target molecules – so called autoantigens. 

StratNeuro has awarded SEK 1,000,000 in start-up grant 2022 to Enric Llorens, Arvid Guterstam and Jeroen Goos. The StratNeuro Start-up Grant is intended to support outstanding Neuroscience researchers at the beginning of their careers, who have received a VR starting grant or a Karolinska Institutet assistant professor grant.

Eva Kosek has been researching pain mechanisms for many years. Now she and her colleagues have developed criteria for calling in so-called nociplastic pain. It is a condition in which pain is not just a symptom but a disease in itself.

The discovery that the anaesthetic ketamine can help people with severe depression has raised hopes of finding new treatment options for the disease. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now identified novel mechanistic insights of how the drug exerts its antidepressant effect. The findings have been published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.