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.
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Contact: communication@cmm.se
CENTER FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE
OLLE KÄMPE GROUP
To be updated
Research projects
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MultipleMS: Multiple manifestations of genetic and non-genetic factors in Multiple Sclerosis disentangled with a multi-omics approach to accelerate personalised medicine
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Role of genetic and lifestyle exposures in severity/outcome of multiple sclerosis
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Role of virus infections in risk for multiple sclerosis
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Genetic control of immune response to viral infections with focus on herpes viruses and JC virus
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EU-STANDS4PM: A European standardization framework for data integration and data-driven in silico models for personalized medicine
Selected publications
Manouchehrinia A, Piehl F, Hillert J, Kuhle J, Alfredsson L, Olsson T, Kockum I, Confounding effect of blood volume and body mass index on blood neurofilament light chain levels, Ann Clin Transl Neurol. 2020 Jan;7(1):139-143
International Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium. Multiple sclerosis genomic map implicates peripheral immune cells and microglia in susceptibility. Science. 2019 Sep 27;365(6460)
Tengvall K, Huang J, Hellström C, Kammer P, Biström M, Ayoglu B, Lima Bomfim I, Stridh P, Butt J, Brenner N, Michel A, Lundberg K, Padyukov L, Lundberg IE, Svenungsson E, Ernberg I, Olafsson S, Dilthey AT, Hillert J, Alfredsson L, Sundström P, Nilsson P, Waterboer T, Olsson T, Kockum I. Molecular mimicry between Anoctamin 2 and Epstein-Barr virus nuclear antigen 1 associates with multiple sclerosis risk. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Aug 20;116(34):16955-16960
International Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium. Low-Frequency and Rare-Coding Variation Contributes to Multiple Sclerosis Risk. Cell. 2018 Nov 29;175(6):1679-1687.e7
Kular L, Liu Y, Ruhrmann S, Zheleznyakova G, Marabita F, Gomez-Cabrero D, James T, Ewing E, Lindén M, Górnikiewicz B, Aeinehband S, Stridh P, Link J, Andlauer TFM, Gasperi C, Wiendl H, Zipp F, Gold R, Tackenberg B, Weber F, Hemmer B, Strauch K, Heilmann-Heimbach S, Rawal R, Schminke U, Schmidt CO, Kacprowski T, Franke A, Laudes M, Dilthey AT, Celius EG, Søndergaard HB, Tegnér J, Harbo HF, Oturai AB, Olafsson S, Eggertsson HP, Halldorsson BV, Hjaltason H, Olafsson E, Jonsdottir I, Stefansson K, Olsson T, Piehl F, Ekström TJ, Kockum I, Feinberg AP, Jagodic M. DNA methylation as a mediator of HLA-DRB1*15:01 and a protective variant in multiple sclerosis. Nat Commun. 2018 Jun 19;9(1):2397.
James T, Lindén M, Morikawa H, Fernandes SJ, Ruhrmann S, Huss M, Brandi M, Piehl F, Jagodic M, Tegnér J, Khademi M, Olsson T, Gomez-Cabrero D, Kockum I. Impact of genetic risk loci for multiple sclerosis on expression of proximal genes in patients. Hum Mol Genet. 2018 Mar 1;27(5):912-928.
Sundqvist E, Buck D, Warnke C, Albrecht E, Gieger C, Khademi M, Lima Bomfim I, Fogdell-Hahn A, Link J, Alfredsson L, Søndergaard HB, Hillert J; International Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium, Oturai AB, Hemmer B, Kockum I, Olsson T. JC polyomavirus infection is strongly controlled by human leucocyte antigen class II variants. PLoS Pathog. 2014 Apr 24;10(4):e1004084.