Qiang Pan Hammarström

I am a professor of clinical immunology at the Division of Immunology, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Karolinska Institutet. 

I was trained as a medical doctor and graduated from Sun Yat-Sen Medical University in China in 1993. During 1993 and 1994, I worked as a physician at the Guangzhou Respiratory Disease Research Institute. I obtained my PhD degree in Clinical Immunology / Immunology at the Karolinska Institutet in 1999 and carried out postdoc training at Harvard Medical School in 2000. In 2001 I came back to the Karolinska Institutet where I became an associate professor and group leader in 2004. I was appointed professor of clinical immunology at the Karolinska Institutet in 2011.

I was a guest professor at Beijing University (2005-2009), Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Centre (2012-2021) and Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute (2015-2023). I was also a visiting scientist/professor in Harvard Medical School (2012), Rockefeller University (2013-2015, short sabbatical visits), the Broad Institute at Harvard and MIT (2015-2019, 2022, short sabbatical visits), and Institute of Human Biology, Roche (2024-2025, short sabbatical visits).

I have supervised 13 PhD students and trained 24 postdocs and have published altogether 230 papers in areas of immunoglobulin gene diversifications, primary immunodeficiencies, genome instability, infectious diseases, B cell malignancies and cancer genetics.

Education
- Bachelor degree in Medicine, Sun Yat-Sen Medical University, China, 1988-1993
- PhD degree in Clinical Immunology/Immunology, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, 1994-1999
- Executive education program of leadership development, Harvard Business School, USA, 2017-2019

Academic honours, awards and prizes
- Scholarship for postdoctoral medical research, Swedish Society for Medical Research, 2003
- Assistant Professor position, 4 years, awarded by the Swedish Research Council, 2003
- Young investigator prize, awarded by the Swedish Society of Medicine, 2007
- ERC Starting Grant, awarded by the European Research Council, 2009
- Senior researcher position, 6 years, awarded by the Swedish Research Council, 2010
- Distinguished Alumni, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, 2011
- Senior investigator award, 5 years, Center for Innovation Medicine, 2016
- Elected member of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet, 2019
- Adjunct member of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, 2023, 2025
- Elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences,  2023

- Wallenberg Scholar award, 5 years, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, 2024

Current projects

Regulation of immunoglobulin class switch recombination in human B cells
The project is aimed at understanding the complex molecular mechanisms involved in DNA editing, repair and recombination during immunoglobulin class switch recombination (CSR) and somatic hypermutation (SHM) and their involvement in the pathophysiological processes leading to immunodeficiency, genome instability and cancer development in humans.

Induced pluripotent stems cells a platform for personalized diagnosis and therapy in patients with primary immunodeficiency
The project is aimed at reprogramming the fibroblasts or peripheral blood B cells derived from IgA deficient (IgAD) patients into pluripotent stem (iPS) cells and to re-differentiate these iPS cells into antibody-producing B cells. If successful, this study may provide a potentially curative treatment in patients with IgA deficiency. They will also provide a methodological platform for studies aimed at replacing cells in patients with a variety of other primary immunodeficiency diseases as well as autoimmune and neurological disorders associated with these diseases.

Discovery of therapeutic targets in B cell lymphoma by next generation sequencing
The project is aimed at identifying potentially treatable molecular targets in mature B cell lymphomas (with focus on diffuse large B cell lymphomas and mantle cell lymphomas) by high-throughput, next generation-sequencing omic- technologies such as whole genome and exome sequencing and RNA-seq.

Antibody therapy against CVID-19
The project is aimed at establishing a passive immunotherapy against coronavirus COVID19. To reach this overall goal, we will obtain blood samples from convalescent donors, i.e. people who have recovered from the infection, to isolate antibodies that can be used to prevent and to treat the disease.

Our research is funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR), Swedish Cancer Society (Cancerfonden), Stockholm Cancer Society (Radiumhemmets), Vinnova, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation and Mayo Clinic Cancer Research Center and Cancer Research KI (Cancer Research Award).