The Rolf Luft Grant for Instrumentation
Honoring the renowned Swedish diabetes scientist Rolf Luft, SRP Diabetes wishes to support excellent Principal Investigators in the field of diabetes and metabolism at Karolinska Institutet to obtain critical instrumentation for their research. Grants for instruments in the range of 200 000 SEK up to 4 MSEK can be applied for. Please note: this grant programme is not connected to the Rolf Luft Foundation who awards the prize "Rolf Luft Award".
Conditions/eligibility
- Applicants should have their own research line, conducting internationally leading research within the area of diabetes/metabolism and/or diabetes complications.
- Applicants must present a research plan in the area of diabetes/metabolism and/or diabetes complications.
- The applicant should be an independent principal investigator (PI) working at least 50 % at a department at Karolinska Institutet.
- PIs who have received this grant in earlier calls are not eligible to apply again.
- If awarded, the purchased equipment should be made available to use also for other researchers within SRP Diabetes and KI
2024 Recipients
After an external evaluation three researchers from Karolinska Institutet were awarded the Rolf Luft Grant for Instrumentation:
1. Recipient: Alessandro Furlan (Dept of Neuroscience)
Instrument: Neurolux for wireless investigation. The Neurolux is a mechano-acoustic device which can detect several metabolic parameters including heart rate, respiratory rate and body temperature. Simultaneously, it detects mechanical changes in the mouse musculature and uses this information to reliably decode behaviors such as eating, walking, rearing, digging, and grooming.
Contact person for instrument: Alessandro Furlan. The instrument is in the process of being purchased.
2. Recipient: Alastair Kerr (Dept of Medicine Huddinge)
Instrument: CAMAG fully automated HPTLC system with a visualizer. This platform will allow the identification of specific branches of lipid storage or breakdown in your system of interest. It enables an intermediate affordable solution before lipidomics that can be performed at scale in house. If needed, specific bands can be directly extracted for lipidomics. The system can perform pulse-chase assays with fluorescent/radiolabelled lipids for quantitative flux experiments.
Contact person for instrument: Alastair Kerr. The instrument is in the process of being purchased.
3. Recipient: Paolo Parini (Dept of Medicine Huddinge/Dept of Laboratory Medicine)
Instrument: VWR Chromaster system. The VWR Chromaster system provides high-resolution size-exclusion chromatography (SEC). It will be used for high-quality characterization of lipoproteins to elucidate pathophysiological changes in lipid metabolism associated with diabetes and cardiometabolic diseases.
Contact person for the instrument: Paolo Parini. The instrument is in the process of being purchased.
2022 Recipients
After an external evaluation two researchers from Karolinska Institutet were awarded the Rolf Luft Grant for Instrumentation:
1. Recipient: RongRong Fan (Dept of BioNut, Huddinge)
Instrument: F.Sight 2.0 single cell dispenser. The F.Sight 2.0 equipment is a bench top machine that allows separation of single cells into the 384 well plate in a more efficient way. It will significantly improve our capacity to develop new single cell epigenetic tools for our project. In addition, the machine can also be used to generate CRISPR KO cell lines.
Contact person for instrument: RongRong Fan. The instrument is in the process of being purchased.
2. Recipient: Johanna Lanner (Dept of FyFa, Solna)
Instrument: 1200B in vitro muscle test system. This is an in vitro muscle test system for intact skeletal muscle of mice from Aurora Scientific (1200B, 4-channels). This muscle test system is the leading solution for quantifying mechanical properties of isolated intact muscle.
Contact person for instrument: Johanna Lanner. The instrument is in the process of being purchased.
2021 Recipients
After an external evaluation four researchers from Karolinska Institutet were awarded the Rolf Luft Grant for Instrumentation:
1. Recipient: Myriam Aouadi (Center for Infectious Medicine, Dept of Medicine Huddinge)
Instrument: Digital PCR (dPCR). The dPCR technology allows the precise, robust, sensitive and multiplexed quantification of nucleic acid absolute copies in tissues and fluids even in samples where quantity is limited.
Contact persons for instrument, CIM support team Silvia Zuniga Veliz or Laura Espino Paisan
2. Recipient: Mattias Carlström (Dept of Physiology and Pharmacology)
Instrument: InAlyzer (Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry; DEXA) Longitudinal measurement(s) of bone, lean and fat masses in rodents.
Contact person for instrument: Mattias Carlström
3. Recipient: Carolina Hagberg (Dept of Medicine Solna)
Instrument: Protein Simple Jess capillary western blot machine. The Jess is a capillary-based nano-immunoassay system that separates pico-grams of protein based on size and allows hands-free, easy antibody detection and quantification. We will use it to study protein changes in adipocyte spheroids and small human adipose tissue biopsies, but any small sample can be analysed using it.
Contact person for instrument: Carolina Hagberg
4. Recipient: Kirsty Spalding (Dept of Cell and Molecular Biology)
Instrument: Biorep Perifusion system. The Biorep Perifusion System allows for cell secretion analysis. In the perifusion assay, the perfusate not only stimulates the cells but constantly washes away any metabolite secreted by the cell or group of cells under study. The perfusate is then collected in a multi-well plate for further analysis.
Contact person for instrument: Benjamin Dedic