Biography
Professor Robert A. Harris
Professor Robert A. Harris (Bob) was born in Harpenden in Southern UK in 1966. He conducted a Bsc.Hons undergraduate degree at Portsmouth Polytechnic, majoring in Parasitology in 1987. PhD studies at University College London studying innate immune agglutinins in Schistosoma host snail species with Terry Preston and Vaughan Southgate as supervisors culminated with a thesis defence in early 1991. A 2.5 year postdoc at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in Paul Kaye’s research group ensued, with focus on understanding the intracellular fate of Leishmania spp. protozoans in macrophages. Bob was awarded a Wellcome Trust postdoctoral fellowship that permitted his relocation to the Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm, Sweden) in the spring of 1994. A postdoc period was spent split between the labs of Anders Örn and Tomas Olsson, in which he studied Trypanosoma cruzi and Trypanosoma bruceii protozoan proteins. Bob became an Associate Professor at the Karolinska Institutet in 1999, heralding his establishment as a PI. Bob started to work with autoimmune diseases in 1996 and began study of therapy using live parasite infections or parasite molecules. His research group has developed autoantigen-specific vaccines, defined the effects of post-translational biochemical molecules on autoantigenicity and developed a macrophage adoptive transfer therapy that prevents pathogenesis in several experimental disease models. He became Professor of Immunotherapy in Neurological Diseases in 2013. In recent years research focus has centred on understanding the immunopathogenesis of incurable neurodegenerative diseases, with particular emphasis on development of immunotherapies directed at microglial cells as potential therapeutic paradigms.
Bob Harris CV July 2020
ERIK HERLENIUS GROUP
Development of autonomic control
About
Immature or deficient autonomic control is a common problem in infants born at a premature age and is of central importance in apneas, secondary hypoxic brain damage and sudden infant death syndrome.
PER ERIKSSON GROUP
Research
For better understanding of disturbances in respiratory control we study early development of cardiorespiratory control, brainstem neural networks and its associations with normal and pathological breathing. The conceptual change introduced by our recent data that endogenous prostaglandins are central pathogenic factors in respiratory disorders and the hypoxic response, open new diagnostic and therapeutic avenues that should significantly better the diagnostics and treatment of newborns and adult patients.
Inflammation is a major culprit in breathing disorders and we hypothesize that by using a newly developed urinary prostaglandin biomarker we can screen, detect and protect against inflammation related breathing disorders.
Our collaborative efforts enable us to move from a clinical problem to molecular understanding of the disease and studies are performed in patients, animal & in vitro models.
Our research is focused on the development of autonomic control with normal and paediatric patients as the target. Autonomic dysfunction in breathing and circulatory control often has its origin in neurodevelopment disorders. Furthermore, our basic research in developmental neuroscience how neural activity and stem cells form activity dependent networks is vital for the development of therapeutic interventions.
Read more
Contact: communication@cmm.se
CENTER FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE
Cancer genetics
ANNIKA LINDBLOM GROUP
About
Families undergoing genetic counseling for an increased risk of cancer and where no disease gene is known are being included in our ongoing studies. We have performed many studies to rule out possible candidate genes. Families without known mutations have been recruited to our linkage and association studies. We have in total identified more than 1000 families without mutations in known genes and many of those families have been included in studies. We have ongoing studies in familial colorectal cancer and familial breast cancer and we are looking for new cancer syndromes. We also use large clinical materials for testing the hypothesis of cancer as a complex disease. Our results are implemented into clinical praxis. We have studied effects of genetic counseling and genetic testing and surveillance in cancer families and been able to demonstrate the usefulness of oncogenetic counseling and that it does not bring unwanted side effects of anxiety. We have also continued to improve the procedure of genetic cancer counseling, and to improve the procedure of genetic testing and to evaluate the surveillance program. We have also found that patients under surveillance tolerate this well and are aware of its importance.
Selected publications
Møller P, et al. Cancer incicence and survival in Lynch syndrome patients receiving colonoscopic and gynaecological surveillance: first report from the prospective Lynch syndrom database. Gut. 2017 Mar;66(3):464-472.
Cheng TH, et al. Five endometriaal cancer risk loci identified through genome-wide association analysis. Nat Genet. 2016 Jun;48(6):667-74.
Movahedi M, et al. Obesity, Aspirin and Risk of Colorectal Cancer in Carriers of Hereditary Colorectal Cancer: A Prospective Investigation in the CAPP2 Study. J Clin Oncol. 2015 Nov 1;33(31):3591-7.
Michailidou K. et al. Genome-wide association analysis of more than 120.000 individuals identifies 15 new susceptibility loci for breast cancer. Nat Genet. 2015 Apr;47(4):373-80.
ten Broeke SW, et al. Lynch syndrom caused by germline PMS2 mutations: delineating the cancer risk. J Clin Oncol. 2015 Feb 1;33(4):319-25.
Kuchenbaecker KB, et al. Identification of six new susceptibility loci for invasive epithelial ovarian cancer. Nat Genet. 2015 Feb;47(2):164-71.
Kontham V, von Holst S, Lindblom, A. Linkage analysis in familial non-Lynch syndrome colorectal cancer families from Sweden. PLoS One. 2013 Dec 11;8(12):e83936.
Bojesen SE, et al. Multiple independent variants at the TERT locus ar associated with telomere length and risks of breast and ovarian cancer. Nat Genet. 2013 Apr;45(4):371-84, 384e1-2.
Dunlop MG, et al. Common variation near CDKN1A, POLD3 and SHROOM2 influences colorectal cancer risk. Nat Genet. 2012 May 27;44(7):770-6.
Burn J, et al. Long-term effect of aspirin on cancer risk in carriers of hereditary colorectal cancer: an analysis from the CAPP2 randomised controlled trial. Lancet. 2011 Dec 17;378(9809):2081-7.
Platten U, Rantala J, Lindblom A, Brandberg Y, Lindgren G, Arver B. The use of telephone in genetic counseling versus in-person counseling: a randomized study on counselees’ outcome. Fam Cancer. 2012 Sep;11(3):371-9.