MDS Europe - Karolinska Institutet

Karolinska Institutet

The Karolinska Institute (KI) is a complete medical university with an outstanding scientific record. KI is closely linked to the Karolinska University Hospital, ensuring a strong basis for translational and clinical research. Haematology and clinical cell therapy are traditionally well-reputed research areas and have their main activity located at the Southern campus, Huddinge.

Center for Hematology and Regenerative Medicine (HERM) was inaugurated in 2012 and is a platform-based research environment encompassing 17 small and medium-sized research groups with a focus on haematopoiesis, haematology and cellular therapies. The mission of HERM is to create maximum synergy between basic and clinical research groups to be able to take on novel and clinically relevant research questions. The clinical research group leaders at HERM are also engaged in specific patient or therapeutic areas – this ensures effective development of patient registries and biobanking.

Haematology in Sweden is carried out within strong National and Nordic collaborative working groups focused on the diagnostic subgroups. The Nordic MDS Group is led from the Karolinska Institute, and has been chaired by Eva Hellström Lindberg for more than 30 years.

Our team

Prof. Eva Hellström Lindberg, MD

Eva Hellstrom Lindberg is professor of hematology at department of medicine, Huddinge, and chair for the Center for Hematology and Regenerative Medicine (HERM). She is also a senior consultant at the Center for Hematology, Karolinska University Hospital and the lead of the clinical MDS programme. Her research group is located at HERM and employs 12 people engaged in translational and clinical projects. Her main research interests are how to identify and target stem cells underlying relapse of MDS after stem cell transplantation, and how to understand and target the erythroid failure in refractory anemia with ring sideroblasts. Eva has been the president for the European Hematology Association, and has been involved in a number of large European projects, including the EU MDS Registry and the European guidelines for MDS. She is the chair of the Nordic MDS Group, which encompasses all regions in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland. NMDSG regularly updates the Nordic guidelines for management of MDS. She has two large well-annotated biobanks, which play important roles both in MDS Right and in other international collaborative projects. The KI biobank collects blood and bone marrow from over 50 new patients per year, and consecutively during treatment. The national biobank collects DNA from all newly diagnosed patients in the Swedish Cancer Register.

Dr. Magnus Tobiasson, MD

Magnus Tobiasson holds a PhD in hematology and is senior consultant at the department of Hematology, Karolinska University Hospital. He has been instrumental in the high throughput analyses of mutational and gene expression profiling in the MDS Right project (WP2). He has also been actively involved in the guideline project (WP5).

Dr. Martin Jädersten, MD

Martin Jädersten holds a PhD in hematology and is senior consultant at the department of Hematology, Karolinska University Hospital. He has been instrumental in the MDS guideline project (WP5)

Med Lic BSc. Monika Jansson

Monika is a biomedical scientist, specialized in haematological cytogenetics and cell culture work. She is in charge of the sample handling in Sweden and preparation of the Swedish MDS biobank in collaboration with BBMRI at Karolinska Institutet.

BSc. Gunilla Walldin

Gunilla Walldin is a research nurse and works in the MDS Research Group at HERM. She is responsible for all biobank sampling in the MDS group at HERM and also coordinates the Swedish MDS National Biobank project.

Dr. Sara von Bahr Grebäck

Sara is the coordinator of the Nordic MDS group. She is the personal assistant for Eva Hellström Lindberg and the MDS group. She takes care of logistics, writing, and applications. She also takes care of some of the biobank sampling. She is a molecular biologist with a PhD in clinical biochemistry.

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