Ming Wai Lau Centre for Reparative Medicine
Ming Wai Lau Centre for Reparative Medicine is established to further accelerate research in stem cell biology, biomedical engineering, biotechnology, and regenerative medicine at Karolinska Institutet.
Congratulations
Gonçalo Castelo-Branco has been awarded the Göran Gustafsson Prize 2021 in Medicine
Gonçalo Castelo-Branco has been awarded the Göran Gustafsson Prize 2021 in Medicine
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded Gonçalo Castelo-Branco the Göran Gustafsson Prize 2021. Gonçalo has been awarded the prize in Medicine for his research of oligodendrocytes, a type of brain cell, and the myelination of neurons in health and disease.
Latest News
Zongli Zheng comments on Precision Medicine diagnosis
Zongli Zheng comments on Precision Medicine diagnosis
Liquid biopsy is becoming an important alternative to the traditional tissue-based cancer diagnosis for precision medicine. However, the increasingly reported non-canonical genetic alterations from DNA-based sequencing have raised questions on their underlying mechanisms and clinical significances. Zongli Zheng comments in an editorial in the prestigious Journal of Thoracic Oncology and calls for precision diagnosis to maximize patient benefits.
KI researchers talked about mRNA vaccine
KI researchers talked about mRNA vaccine
mRNA technology is now being used in developing vaccine against coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Linxian Li has worked on the development of a delivery system for mRNA molecules into our cells for ten years, hoping that producing better lipid nanoparticles will bring less side effects and longer storage time in vaccine, and even gene therapy. Let’s learn more about the mRNA technology.
Sijie Chen collaborates with local universities in getting CRF 2020/21
Sijie Chen collaborates with local universities in getting CRF 2020/21
Sijie Chen is one of the co-investigators together with Prof Ben Zhong Tang, our MWLC associate member, who is the main applicant for the application titled “New Aggregation-Induced Emission Systems: Solving the Existing Problems in Bioimaging and Developing New Biological Applications”. The application has been awarded HKD 6,400,000 from Research Grants Council (RGC) under the Collaborative Research Fund (CRF) Scheme (2020/21). The team comprises eight faculty members from five institutes with complementary expertise in organic chemistry, photochemistry, biology, and medicine. They aim to develop new AIEgens with emission in the second near-infrared window, persistent room-temperature phosphorescence and chemiluminescence. These molecules are anticipated to solve the existing problems in bioimaging.
Fredrik Lanner has a new publication in Nature Cell Biology
Fredrik Lanner has a new publication in Nature Cell Biology
Stem cell research is fundamental for reparative medicine, which with the help of the body's cells, recreates and heals important organs. Now, Fredrik Lanner’s team, together with researchers at SickKids in Canada and KU Leuven in Belgium, have developed a method for defining the most general type of stem cells, that can develop into all cell types in the body. The study of totipotent stem cells in mice has been published in Nature Cell Biology.
Simon Elsässer has been awarded the Consolidator grant 2020
Simon Elsässer has been awarded the Consolidator grant 2020
Congratulations to Simon Elsässer for being one of the eight awarded candidates for the Consolidator grant! Karolinska Institutet established the Consolidator grant to give the most prominent younger researchers the opportunity to consolidate their research and broaden their activities. The eight awarded candidates this year were selected from 63 qualified applicants, and they would receive up to 1.2 million SEK per year over five years.
Gonçalo Castelo-Branco’s new publication in Nature Communications
Gonçalo Castelo-Branco’s new publication in Nature Communications
The Castelo-Branco lab has previously shown that mature oligodendrocytes show transcriptional heterogeneity (Marques et al., Science 2016). In their latest publication in Nature Communications, they showed that distinct mouse mature oligodendrocytes populations have spatial preference in the mammalian central nervous system (CNS) and different responses to spinal cord injury.
Simon Elsässer’s new publication in Journal of the American Chemical Society
Simon Elsässer’s new publication in Journal of the American Chemical Society
Researchers have been using light microscopes and fluorescent proteins to study how proteins work inside human cells, however they face limitations in studying microproteins which are much smaller than typical proteins, and thus are often overlooked. Simon Elsässer’s team has now developed a method, termed STELLA, which allows fluorescent tagging of proteins with the smallest imaginable perturbation - a single amino acid building block added genetically on either end of the protein. With STELLA, the team was also able to label and localize a number of elusive polypeptides produced by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus causing COVID-19.
Highlights
Inauguration of MWLC
Inauguration of MWLC
On 7 October 2016, MWLC was inaugurated in Hong Kong Science Park. The officiating party included representatives of the Chinese and Hong Kong SAR governments, the Consul General of Sweden in Hong Kong and Macao, senior management of KI and Steering Group and management team of MWLC.
Visit of HRH Prince Carl Philip
Visit of HRH Prince Carl Philip
HRH Prince Carl Philip of Sweden visited MWLC on 7 December as part of an official visit to Hong Kong. Our scientists showed the Prince and the Consul General Helena Storm to our lab facilities and experiments.
Visit of the President and Chair of the Board
Visit of the President and Chair of the Board
President Ole Petter Ottersen and Chair of the Board of Karolinska Institutet Mikael Odenberg met with MWLC staff for the very first time on 19 December 2018. Our PIs presented ongoing research and demonstrated some of the techniques used in the lab.
Shaping the future of MWLC
Shaping the future of MWLC
MWLC together with the Consulate General of Sweden organized the reception "Moving forward together: Shaping the future of Ming Wai Lau Centre for Reparative Medicine" for representatives from the academia, industry and governmental bodies to learn more about MWLC and our ongoing activities.
For MWLC staff
KI-login required for information for MWLC staff only