Awarded with Swedish Research Council's starting Grant within Natural and Engineering Sciences. MedTechLabs fellow, Jeroen Goos is awarded as a junior researcher to establish himself as independent researcher in Sweden. The 4-year grant amounts to SEK 4 000 000.

The grant is directed to the project “Tearing down the walls of brain cancer: delivery of radiopharmaceuticals across the blood-brain barrier”

One in three children that suffer from brain cancer dies before reaching adulthood. Standard treatment generally involves the opening of the skull for physical removal of the tumour, often in combination with several cycles of chemo- and/or radiotherapy. Brain surgery is highly invasive and comes with significant risks. Risks include bleeding or blood clots in the brain, swelling, memory problems, seizures, infections, stroke, coma and impaired speech, vision, coordination or balance. Furthermore, it is often difficult for a surgeon to identify where the tumour ends and healthy tissue begins. Surgery is only effective when the tumour is fully removed, since an incomplete resection will lead to relapse, and decreases the survival chances of a patient. In the current project, we are developing an innovative, non-surgical treatment strategy that minimises side effects with a substantial chance of significant tumour reduction or complete tumour elimination.

A promising non-surgical treatment strategy: endoradiotherapy

In the field of endoradiotherapy, tumour-targeting molecules such as antibodies or peptides are labelled with radioactive isotopes to deliver a lethal dose of radiation to a tumour. These radiolabelled molecules are injected into patients with cancer to bind to tumour cells and irradiate the tumour from within. With this treatment, the number and size of tumours can significantly be reduced, which has led to a remarkable increase in survival rates. A major limitation in the scope of brain cancer, however, is that standard endoradiotherapeutic agents cannot cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB). This is a layer of tightly packed cells that separates the brain from the blood circulation to protect it from toxins and other pathogens. The first goal of this project is to design endoradiotherapeutic agents that can cross the BBB and target the brain tumour. As a first strategy, we are developing an innovative bispecific antibody that can be transported across the BBB to specifically bind to brain tumour cells. Here, we combine a tumour-targeting antibody with parts of a second antibody that enable transportation across the BBB. As a second strategy, we are using a peptide from scorpion venom, which is designed by nature to cross the BBB to target the central nervous system. In preclinical studies, this peptide has demonstrated an exceptionally high specificity for brain tumour cells.

Minimising side effects

Antibodies and peptides generally circulate in the body for multiple days. In the case of radiolabelled antibodies and peptides, this leads to undesirably high radiation doses to healthy tissues. Particularly in children, this may lead to significant side effects, such as impaired bone growth, calcium deficiency and toxicity to the haematopoietic system. The second goal of this project is to reduce side effects by separately injecting the bispecific antibody or peptide and the radioactive agent, which then chemically react to each other at the tumour site. The advantage of this pretargeting strategy is that long-circulating, unbound antibodies and peptides are cleared from the body before the radioactive agent is injected. This radioactive agent is cleared from the body rapidly, thereby minimising the radiation dose to healthy tissues. With this strategy, we aim to deliver a high therapeutic radiation dose to the brain tumour, while minimising the side effects caused by radiation to the rest of the body.

Innovative research

Our research integrates recent advances in radiology, oncology, chemistry and molecular biology into innovative research designs and novel treatment strategies. This project will open up new fields of research and allow children with brain cancer to benefit from the exceptional proven clinical advantages of endoradiotherapy, with minimal side effects. The newly designed methodologies and agents could lead to breakthroughs in key applications of fundamental, preclinical and clinical interest and change the way we approach illnesses of the brain.

Three films narrated by the centre's researchers. Explore short videos presenting the research at the centre.

MedTechLabs has produced three short videos about the research at the centre. The aim is to raise awareness of this research among the wider public. All films have an English subtitled version and are on our YouTube-channel.

Please watch and share!

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Spinn off from KTH and Karolinska Institutet awarded for quality assured dry blood sampling. We congratulate MedTechLabs acting director Niclas Roxhed with colleagues at Capitainer, who just won Guldpillret (The Golden Pill) 2021 and the prize of SEK 100 000.

The award was founded by The Swedish Pharmaceutical Insurance and is presented in collaboration with industry magazines Dagens Medicin and Apoteksmarknaden. Capitainer is sprung out of a research group from KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Karolinska Institutet.

The company Capitainer has 10 fulltime employees and are aiming for an international market. The researh group continues to develop the method with, among others, SciLifeLab, in order to develop a protocoll for the analysis of thousands of proteins using just one small sample. Hence the method could be used for large screening pograms and follow-up studies. 

Read an article about the award and Capitainer published by Dagens Medicin here (in swedish). 

Photo: Pax Engström Nyström

New diagnostic solutions based on AI for breast cancer pathology. MSEK 20 granted for clinical implementation. Project conducted in participation with industry companies, regions and Swedish Breast Cancer Association.

Great news! MedTechLabs researchers Mattias Rantalainen, Johan Hartman and colleagues at Karolinska Institute has been granted MSEK 20 from Vinnova for their clinical implementation of AI on breast cancer pathology. The total Vinnova investment of MSEK 323 in innovation environments in precision health will pave the way for a more preventive, accurate and equal health care and contribute to strengthening Sweden as a life science nation. Read more (in Swedish)

The journal Cancer Research (IF 12.3) publishes an article with Johan Hartman and Mattias Rantailanen as shared last authors. The article describes how expression of genes can be predicted directly from routine stained microscopy images of breast cancer.

Read the full scientific paper here .

News article on high valuation of research patents. On June 22 Swedens largest financial newspaper published an article about MedTechLabs and the valuation of patens for medical technology.

Analytics company Cascelotte has placed research patents from the centre researchers at the same level as top universities such as Stanford, Harvard, Oxford and Johns Hopkins. In the article Niclas Roxhed and Johan Schuber explains the importance of getting such high valuation of the patents clarified:

”For me as a researcher it’s about that I want to see my inventions getting into use in the healthcare”, explains Niclas Roxhed, research leader in micro and nano systems at Medtechlabs. 

”It is also very important results for Stockholm in order to attract the best talents and to get companies to place their R&D here” ascerts Johan Schuber.

Read the full article (in Swedish) here

Today Nature Communications published the article "Multianalyte serology in home-sampled blood enables an unbiased assessment of the immune response against SARS-CoV-2" with MedTechLabs's Niclas Roxhed as first author.

Read the full scientific article at the Nature Communications website, here. 

Also, read about the project on home-testing of Covid-19, here (in swedish). 

On April 29 2021 Måns Marklund, CEO Cascelotte, presented new methods for the analysis and valuation of economic effects from research and innovation. Watch the video from the seminar here (27 minuter).

Link to video: youtu.be/wU73dc9_H98

Nature Communications has published “COVID-19 pathophysiology may be driven by an imbalance in the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system” written by MedTechLabs researcher Johan Lundberg with co-authors.

Read the full article here. 

Read about Johan Lundberg and his research at MedTechLabs here.