Nikolas Herold

Paediatric Oncologist (Paediatric Oncology, Astrid Lindgren's Children Hospital,
Karolinska University Hospital)
Associate Professor of Paediatrics
Before Sidney Farber introduced chemotherapy to treat childhood cancer at the
end of the 1940s, paediatric cancers have been – with the exception of a
small subset of patients that could be cured by radical surgery only –
considered universally lethal, and any treatment had been considered
unethical experiments prolonging the patients’ suffering. However,
empirical combinations of several cytotoxic drugs have led to an overall cure
rate of childhood cancer of 85%. Nevertheless, 15% of paediatric cancer
patients still succumb to their disease despite heavy combination therapies,
and the death toll for adult cancer patients (e.g. 70% for acute myeloid
leukaemia in adults vs less than 30% in children) is far higher. As of today,
one understands surprisingly little about how combined drugs exert their
synergistic effects on a cellular and molecular level. My research sets out
to understand why certain combinations of chemotherapies work for some, but
not all patients with the same diagnosis. The overarching hypothesis that
drives my research is that genetic factors exist that determine the extent of
cellular and clinical drug synergy of two or more drugs (combination
chemotherapy). Identification of these factors will not only allow to
establish predictive biomarkers for combination chemotherapies, but also
constitute the starting point for the development of drugs targeting cellular
factors that block synergy of combination treatments. Alternatively, existing
drugs might be combined in a different schedule that circumvents these
cellular factors.
Research Prize Jeanssons Foundations
(http://jeanssonsstiftelser.se/nikolas-herold/)
Tranlational prize of the Swedish Medical Association
(https://www.sls.se/om-oss/aktuellt/publicerat/2019/translationella-forskningspriset-2019
[1])
NOPHO-prize 2016, Stockholm, Sweden
Docentur (KI), 2021
Medical degree (Heidelberg, Germany, 2012)
Medical license (Sweden), 2015
Doctoral degree (Heidelberg, Germany), 2015
[1] https://www.sls.se/om-oss/aktuellt/publicerat/2019/translationella-forskningspriset-2019