Nordic Life Science 1
Peder Olofsson, Associate Professor, Karolinska I
nstitutet and Henrik Hult, Professor, KTH with healthcare and commercial actors in order to together progress better cancer diagnostics.” The other new programme at the centre will aim to monitor and stimulate the vagus nerve with short electrical pulses, an area known as bioelectronic medicine, in order to treat inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease, and certain cardiovascular diseases. “To our knowledge, the program is the first in Europe to implement bioelectronic medicine clinically for the treatment of inflammatory disease in a patient-friendly environment,” says Sjölander. This research program will be run by Associate Professor Peder Olofsson, researcher at KI, and Henrik Hult, Professor at KTH, together with additional 40 NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG researchers from their respective universities. The program will also employ doctoral students and researchers at the beginning of their careers. “The program within bioelectronic medicine aims to increase knowledge about how neuro reflexes regulates the immune system’s activity and how these new insights could be used for the treatment of inflammatory diseases,” describes Peder Olofsson. “By combining immunology, neuroscience and mathematical analysis the project will try to decode and understand how immune system and nerve cells communicate. The long term goal is to create conditions to build an artificial intelligence that interacts with the nervous system in order to monitor and treat inflammatory diseases,” he continues. This project will also have a five year span but the researchers’ research focus within bioelectronic medicine will be in this program as well longterm, and their operations within this area are already ongoing locally and internationally. “It is an advantage for us to already have clinical studies going on together with BioClinicum, and also that we have an established collaboration with the US Centre for Bioelectronic Medicine in New York,” says Olofsson. BioClinicum is a new research building at the Karolinska University Hospital, which has access to advanced medical emergency care. Both programs will have their main operations there. “BioClinicum is an unique environment that links healthcare with clinical/ translational research. Here you have the opportunity to connect different competencies and for faster testing within healthcare. If the clinical pathology will be located at BioClinicum as planned it will benefit the project as a whole,” says Johan Hartman. NLS