Tests provide new picture of the spread of the virus
2020-05-11
Two recent studies testing for antibodies against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 provide a new picture of the spread of virus in Sweden. “To gain a more realistic picture of the spread of the virus in Sweden, we need to perform more tests,” says Åke Lundkvist, professor of virology at Uppsala University.
His research team at Zoonosis Science Center (ZSC) at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology (IMBIM) is focusing heavily on research about the corona pandemic. In addition to research on possible COVID-19 drugs, they are also focusing on finding and developing tests that detect antibodies against the virus and to understand what their function is.
The goal is to create a more realistic picture of the spread of the virus in Sweden but also to better understand the role of the antibodies during recovery and for immunity after the infection.
“Once we realized that the virus had become epidemic in Sweden, that is, that it is something that we will have to deal with for some time, we gradually refocused our research,” says Åke Lundkvist, professor of virology who leads ZSC.
The researchers have assessed one of all the rapid antibody tests sold online by analysing blood samples from 100 donors from 2018, that is, before the virus was found in humans, to rule out false reactions. The team worked at a record pace and published a scientific article on the rapid test as the first research group in Sweden.
“We did this because the need was so overriding. With the help of volunteer doctors, we tested over 6,000 individuals who work in care homes. We have now compiled the results from the first 1,000, and we will publish this data as soon as possible,” says Lundkvist.
The infection may have come from staff
The study shows that as many as 23 per cent of the 1,000 care workers are or have been infected.
“This shows that the elderly who have died at elderly care homes may have been infected by staff, since the recommendations specified that they were not to have respiratory protection other than when working with sick patients. This is why these results are so important. Among the approximately 230 who had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, almost half had no symptoms at all. So they went to work anyway because they felt completely healthy.”
In addition to rapid tests, the researchers have developed a super-sensitive antibody test based on the Luminex technique. This test is quantitative, unlike rapid tests which only give a positive or negative answer.
Recently, tests were conducted on 454 individuals in Stockholm. These tests showed that only 7.5 per cent had antibodies, which differed significantly from the calculations made by experts at the Public Health Agency.
“We will wait to say more about how immunity is progressing until we have conducted another round of tests in late May.”
Difficult to determine flock immunity
The study also showed major differences in the spread of infection between different parts of Stockholm. Many people are hoping for flock immunity, but Åke Lundkvist finds it difficult to know what that means in this case.
“No one knows how the spread of the virus will develop and what it takes for flock immunity to kick in. We can only speculate. With the flu, 60 to 70 per cent is usually considered necessary to achieve flock immunity. Today, when we vaccinate half the population, ‘only’ between 800 and 1500 people die in Sweden each winter. Before the vaccine came in the 90s, 2000–4000 died of the regular seasonal flu. This numbers won’t stop there in this pandemic.”
Åke Lundkvist worked at Karolinska Institutet and at the Swedish Institute of Infectious Diseases before becoming a professor at Uppsala University in 2014. A year later, a biosafety level 3 laboratory was opened at the Uppsala Biomedical Centre (BMC), and Åke Lundkvist and Björn Olsen, professor of infectious medicine, built up a research team with many different expertises in what was later named ZSC.
“In our team, we have virologists, bacteriologists, entomologists, drug experts, veterinarians and medical researchers. What is amazing is that we now have a collection of people in our Zoonosis Lab that is perfect for researching the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
Annica Hulth
Nyheter
-
Gut epithelium muscles up against infection
2021-04-13
To maximise absorption of nutrients from the diet, the intestinal mucous membrane has a large surface area. However, this also makes it vulnerable to attack from aggressive gut microbes. A new study by Uppsala University researchers now shows that the surface layer of the mucosa, known as the epithelium, can rapidly contract when it recognises a bacterial attack. The results are published in the journal PNAS.
-
Nils Landegren tilldelas Stora Gustafsson priset 2021
2021-04-08
Nils Landegren får Göran Gustafssonpriset i medicinsk vetenskap vid Uppsala universitet. Han är född 1986 i Kalifornien, men är uppvuxen i Uppsala. Han fick sin läkarexamen vid Uppsala universitet 2011, och påbörjade där sedan sin forskning om autoimmuna sjukdomar. Efter disputation 2015 har han kombinerat postdoktoral forskning vid Karolinska Institutet med klinisk tjänstgöring, och han erhöll läkarlegitimation 2018. Sedan början av 2021 är han verksam vid IMBIM, Uppsala universitet som forskargruppledare.
-
Påskkaninen som kan gå på ”händerna”
2021-04-01
Finns det kaniner som inte kan skutta utan tar sig fram gåendes enbart på frambenen? Det gör det faktiskt och genom att studera sådana djur har forskare från bland annat Uppsala universitet lyckats identifiera en gen som är helt nödvändig för att kaniner ska kunna hoppa. Studien är publicerad i PLOS Genetics.
-
Mastcellers frisättning av serotonin bidrar till luftvägsöverkänslighet vid astma
2021-03-11
Vid astma blir luftvägarna överkänsliga. Forskare vid Uppsala universitet har nu hittat en ny bidragande underliggande cellulär och molekylär mekanism som förklarar luftvägsöverkänslighet. Resultaten publiceras i den vetenskapliga tidskriften Allergy.
-
Over half a billion people a year get some type of bacterial intestinal infection. By building their own intestines, so-called organoids, Mikael Sellin and his colleagues at IMBIM, Uppsala University can study how these infections occur.
2021-01-18
-
Antibiotic resistance from random DNA sequences
2021-01-12
An important and still unanswered question is how new genes that cause antibiotic resistance arise. In a new study, Swedish and American researchers have shown how new genes that produce resistance can arise from completely random DNA sequences. The results have been published in the journal PLOS Genetics.
-
Genome sequencing for more sustainable herring fishery
2020-12-16
An international team of Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Irish scientists has used whole genome sequencing to characterise 53 herring populations from the Atlantic Ocean and the Baltic Sea. They have developed genetic markers that make it possible to better monitor herring populations and avoid overfishing. The study is published in the journal eLife.
-
Linnémedaljen tilldelas professor Kerstin Lindblad Toh
2020-12-09
Uppsala universitets Linnémedalj delades ut första gången på Carl von Linnés 300-årsdag den 23 maj 2007. Den förlänas i guld ”för, i första hand, utomordentligt framstående vetenskaplig gärning, särskilt inom de linneanska vetenskapsområdena eller Linnéminnet närliggande fält”.
Linnémedaljen har 2020 tilldelats professor Kerstin Lindblad Toh, Uppsala universitet, samt Chairman Dr. Dai-Won Yoon, Hallym University, Sydkorea. Så här lyder motiveringarna:
-
Stora bidrag till utveckling av forskningsinfrastruktur. Kerstin Lindblad-Toh tilldelas 7 850 000 kr för sitt projekt En svensk EBP plattform: infrastruktur och proof-of-principle project
2020-11-24
-
Carl-Henrik Heldin, Per Jemth, Joakim Näsvall and Gunnar Pejler are awarded a total of 14.2 million by the Swedish Research Council for the grant period 2020-2024.
2020-11-24
-
Rapid testing for antibiotic resistance
2020-11-17
In cases of severe infection, identifying the correct antibiotic – and doing so quickly – can be a matter of life and death. At Uppsala University a very fast test for antibiotic resistance is being developed. The goal is to reduce the time from taking a sample to getting a result from one day to under four hours.
-
240 mammals help us understand the human genome
2020-11-12
A large international consortium led by scientists at Uppsala University and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has sequenced the genome of 130 mammals and analysed the data together with 110 existing genomes to allow scientist to identify which are the important positions in the DNA. This new information can help both research on disease mutations in humans and how best to preserve endangered species. The study is published in Nature.
-
Per Jemth, Lena Kjellén, Kerstin Lindblad-Toh och Anna-Karin Olsson tilldelas 11 miljoner i forskningsanslag av Cancerfonden
2020-11-12
-
Carl-Henric Heldin, Per Jemth, Joakim Näsvall, John Pettersson och Gunnar Pejler har tilldelats projekt/etableringsbidrag på totalt ca 20 miljoner över fyra år av Vetenskapsrådet.
2020-11-04
Vetenskapsrådet har fattat beslut om vilka ansökningar som beviljats bidrag inom Naturvetenskap och teknikvetenskap 2020. Uppsala universitet får 225 miljoner till 65 forskningsprojekt som spänner över ett brett fält av områden
-
Leif Andersson receives 25 million SEK in project grants from KAW
2020-10-01
-
New high-speed test shows how antibiotics combine to kill bacteria
2020-09-18
Researchers at Uppsala University have developed a new method to determine – rapidly, easily and cheaply – how effective two antibiotics combined can be in stopping bacterial growth. The new method is simple for laboratories to use and can provide greater scope for customising treatment of bacterial infections. The study is published in PLOS Biology.
-
Genomic Analysis Reveals Many Animal Species May Be Vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 Infection
2020-08-25
För att i framtiden snabbt kunna hejda utbrott av covid-19 som orsakas av viruset SARS-CoV-2 och för att redan nu kunna skydda utrotningshotade arter som riskerar att drabbas, behövs kunskap om vilka djur som är tänkbara smittbärare av viruset. Professor Kerstin Lindblad-Toh vid Uppsala universitet och hennes kollegor har identifierat ett stort antal däggdjur som potentiellt kan smittas.
-
Birgitta Tomkinson has been awarded the newly established pedagogical prize by BAStU-rådet / BMA program
2020-08-24
-
The Swedish Research Council has granted Jin-ping Li SEK 797,320 in project grants for research on coronavirus and covid-19
2020-07-09
-
Novel function of platelets in tumour blood vessels found
2020-06-25
-
50 miljoner till forskning om antibiotikaresistens
2020-06-05
-
Carl-Henrik Heldin, senior professor at IMBIM, has been appointed by the European Commission as chair of the committee to appoint members of the ERC Scientific Council.
2020-05-27
European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth has invited six high-level scientists to identify future members of the ERC Scientific Council. One of the six is Carl-Henrik Heldin, senior prefessor at IMBIM.
-
Intensive hunt for drugs to fight COVID-19
2020-05-12
The entire world is currently waiting for a vaccine against COVID-19. Intensive research is ongoing to develop useful drugs against the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. At Uppsala Biomedical Centre (BMC), substances are being tested that attack the same type of enzyme as drugs against HIV and hepatitis C.
-
Tests provide new picture of the spread of the virus
2020-05-11
Two recent studies testing for antibodies against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 provide a new picture of the spread of virus in Sweden. “To gain a more realistic picture of the spread of the virus in Sweden, we need to perform more tests,” says Åke Lundkvist, professor of virology at Uppsala University.
-
How gene flow between species influences the evolution of Darwin’s finches
2020-05-05
Despite the traditional view that species do not exchange genes by hybridisation, recent studies show that gene flow between closely related species is more common than previously thought. A team of scientists from Uppsala University and Princeton University now reports how gene flow between two species of Darwin’s finches has affected their beak morphology. The study is published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
-
Kerstin Lindblad-Toh has been elected as a member to the National Academy of Sciences
2020-04-28
Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, Professor of Comparative Genomics at Uppsala University, has been elected as one of 146 new members of the National Academy of Sciences, founded by Abraham Lincoln in 1863.
-
Shady Younis and Gustav Brander has received ”The Wallenberg Foundation Postdoctoral Scholarship Program at Stanford” respectively ”The Wallenberg Foundation scholarship program for postdoctoral studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Broad Institute"
2020-04-08
-
New insights into evolution: why genes appear to move around
2020-03-06
Scientists at Uppsala University have proposed an addition to the theory of evolution that can explain how and why genes move on chromosomes. The hypothesis, called the SNAP Hypothesis, is presented in the scientific journal PLOS Genetics.
-
Mikael Sellin appointed Future Research Leader by SSF
2020-02-18
-
“Lethal” mutation makes tuberculosis bacteria resistant to antibiotic
2020-01-29
Antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis is a common and serious problem globally. In a new article, researchers from Uppsala University describe how tuberculosis bacteria that carries a mutation that in theory should kill them manages to stay alive. The researchers discovered that the same trick that kept the bacteria alive also made them resistant to a very important type of antibiotic.
-
Maria Letizia Di Martino has been awarded an ESCMID Research Grant 2020
2020-01-22
Maria Letizia Di Martino has been awarded 20,000 € by ESCMID (European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases). The project - Revealing the Shigella flexneri epithelial invasome in a human enteroid infection model - will provide a global map of the Shigella virulence factors required for infection of the human “mini-intestine” model. This will form a solid basis for future molecular studies of human shigellosis, a research field thus far hampered by the lack of physiological infection models.
-
Carl-Henric Heldin, Staffan Johansson and Gunnar Pejler have been awarded a total of 10.6 million SEK by the Swedish Cancer Society, Cancerfonden
2019-11-21
Cancerfonden has decided to give an additional SEK 670 million to Swedish cancer research. This means that the Swedish Cancer Society decided this year on a record dividend of SEK 770 million. It is the largest amount in the history of the Swedish Cancer Society.
-
Formas has decided to award Dan Andersson, Kerstin Lindblad-Toh och Linus Sandegren three million SEK each in research funds in the Annual Open Call for Research and Development Projects 2019
2019-11-20
-
Linus Sandegren has been awarded the educational prize Inspiriet by the Medical Studies Council (Medicinska studierådet)
2019-10-14
Medicinska studierådet har tilldelat Linus Sandegren, Universitetslektor vid Institutionen för medicinsk biokemi och mikrobiologi, Uppsala universitet, det pedagogiska priset Inspiriet. Kursledare, Medicinsk mikrobiologi, 8.0 hp, Läkarprogrammet.
-
Dan Andersson has been awarded SEK 5 million over three years by the Erling-Persson Family Foundation for the project “Rapid diagnostics to reduce antibiotic resistance and the adverse effects of antibiotics”.
2019-10-02
-
High levels of hyaluronan polysaccharide in serum from patients infected with dengue virus predict severe disease and contribute to increased blood vessel leakage
2019-09-16
Dengue virus infection is transmitted by mosquitoes and is increasing rapidly in the world due to global warming and travel abroad. The infection causes suffering, consumes medical care resources, and can sometimes develop into a deadly disease that, among other things. manifests itself in a greatly increased leakage in the blood vessels that leads to fluid loss. There is no effective dengue virus vaccine and no specific treatment for patients with dengue fever.
-
Bacterial Persisters Promote the Spread of Antibiotic Resistance Plasmids in the Gut
2019-09-09
Antibiotic therapy of bacterial infections may fail either because the microbe becomes genetically resistant to the administered drug, or because it enters a slow growing antibiotic-tolerant state – a phenomenon known as ”persistence”.
-
How the herring adapted to the light environment in the Baltic Sea
2019-08-27
The evolutionary process that occurs when a species colonizes a new environment provides an opportunity to explore the mechanisms underlying genetic adaptation,which is essential knowledge for understanding evolution and the maintenance of biodiversity. An international team of scientists, led by researchers from Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, reports that a single amino acid change in the light-sensing rhodopsin protein played a critical role when herring adapted to the red-shifted light environment in the Baltic Sea. Remarkably about one third of all fish living in brackish or freshwater carry the same change. The study is published today in PNAS.
-
Anahita Hamidi is rewarded by the Swedish Society for Medical Research, with one of the country's most sought after scholarships for young, extra promising researchers.
2019-08-05
The scholarships are awarded by SSMF with SEK 850,000 for two years of full-time research and SEK 658,000 for two years at half-time. In total, SSMF will support young medical researchers in 2019 with over SEK 70 million. The 26 fellows come from four different universities.
-
Birgitta Tomkinson has been awarded STINT's "Grants for Teaching Sabbaticals"
2019-06-18
-
Kerstin Lindblad-Toh becomes honorary doctor at SLU
2019-06-17
Kerstin Lindblad-Toh har utsetts till veterinärmedicine hedersdoktor vid Sveriges Lantbruksuniversitets (SLU:s) fakultet för veterinärmedicin och husdjursvetenskap. Totalt har sju nya hedersdoktorer utsetts, som promoveras den 5 oktober i Uppsala.
-
Omenn Prize goes to Roderich Römhild for his article on Preventing Antibiotic Resistance
2019-06-12
The $5,000 Omenn Prize for the best article published in the previous calendar year in any scientific journal on a topic related to evolution in the context of medicine and public health goes to Roderich Römhild for his paper: Roemhild, R., Gokhale, C. S., Dirksen, P., Blake, C., Rosenstiel, P., Traulsen, A., … Schulenburg, H. (2018). Cellular hysteresis as a principle to maximize the efficacy of antibiotic therapy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(39), 9767–9772. doi:10.1073/pnas.1810004115
-
New genes out of random gene sequences
2019-06-10
One key question in evolutionary biology is how novel genes arise and develop. Swedish researchers now show how new genes and functions that are advantageous to bacteria can be selected from random DNA sequences. The results are presented in the scientific journal mBio.
-
Helen Wang has received SEK 200,000 from the Foundation Clas Groschinsky's Memorial Fund
2019-05-27
-
Fan Han (Leif Andersson research group) has received a prestigious award from the Chinese government to PhD students abroad. Fan will be one of nine Chinese students in Sweden that get this award this year
2019-03-29
-
Dan Andersson is awarded 18 million by the Wallenberg Foundations in the form of a five-year grant for free research
2019-03-26
Twenty-two Excellent Researchers Chosen to be Wallenberg Scholars
The researchers – among the foremost in their field in Sweden – receive SEK 18 million each from the Wallenberg Foundations in the form of a five-year grant for free research.
Jumping genes, antibiotics resistance, new therapies for infections, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease, secure technology for wireless communication, self-repairing batteries, a better understanding of climate change, and searching for Earth-like planets are examples of the research that will be conducted by some of the twenty-two Wallenberg Scholars.
-
Svårdetekterad antibiotikaresistens underskattat kliniskt problem
2019-02-13
I de flesta fall när en bakterie behandlas med antibiotika som den är känslig emot så fungerar behandlingen. Men ibland fungerar inte det valda antibiotikat och en av förklaringarna till detta är heteroresistens, ett fenomen som forskare vid Uppsala universitet tillsammans med kollegor vid Emory University i USA klarlagt i detalj i en ny studie.
-
Gunnar Pejler receives the largest project grant from Hjärt och Lungfonden, a total of SEK 2.4 million over three years. He is one of the world's leading experts on mast cells, a type of white blood cell that has a key role in asthmatic reactions.
2019-02-05
-
The Linnaeus Medal is awarded to Professor Leif Andersson, the medal is awarded at the Winter Promotion on January 25
2019-01-24
-
Jenny Hesson has been awarded 633 000 SEK in research funding from the Carl Trygger Foundation
2018-11-27