<p><strong>Cancer</strong> remains a leading cause of death, due in great part to delayed diagnosis. Cancer detection is, however, difficult in patients without organ-specific symptoms. This interdisciplinary long-term project investigates blood biomarkers indicative of occult cancer, with a focus on host response (NETs) and tumor-derived markers (liquid biopsies).</p> <p><strong>Conducting</strong> two large clinical studies (including patients at risk of occult cancer), the researchers are developing a simple blood test selecting high-risk patients for a rapid and targeted cancer diagnostic work-up. This could result in shortened diagnostic delay, prompt cancer treatment, and ultimately reduce cancer-related morbidity and mortality.</p>

<p><strong>The COMMUNITY study</strong> aims to investigate how the immune system develops over time after SARS-CoV-2 infection. Blood samples were collected from 2149 hospital workers and 118 COVID-19 patients at Danderyd Hospital during the first phase of the study in April/May 2020. Serology analyses showed that all patients and a high portion of hospital workers (19.1%) had developed IgG antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.</p> <p><strong>Follow-up blood samples</strong> will now be collected after 4 and 10 months, to investigate the duration and efficacy of antibody responses as well as contributing parts of the immune response involving T-cells. The COMMUNITY study constitutes an excellent study group in which to explore immune response over time, as it contains longitudinal data from a large group of individuals with varying degrees of SARS-CoV-2 exposure and infection.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

<p><strong>Since it is often hard to raise funds</strong> for the more general topic of Alzheimer’s, the FBHI (FINGERS Brain Health Institute) decided to raise funds individually for specific projects, of which the ‘dietary intervention and cognition project’ is one.</p> <p><strong>The project</strong> hopes to clarify exactly how diet affects brain aging, to what extent it can slow down or cure dementia, and whether coconut oil can strengthen these positive effects.</p>

<p style="font-weight: 400;"><strong>Professor Per-Olof Berggren</strong> and his group at Karolinska Institutet have developed a unique <em>in vivo</em> imaging approach to enable identification of novel druggable targets and drugs  for these targets in diabetes treatment. They use the anterior chamber of the eye as a novel transplantation site, with the cornea as a natural body window visualizing human islet cell physiology/pathology <em>in vivo</em>, non-invasively, longitudinally at single cell resolution.</p> <p style="font-weight: 400;"><strong>In both type 1 and type 2 diabetes</strong> a major problem is to improve the success rate of islet transplantation. Professor Berggren is now running  clinical trials both in Europe, USA and Mexico to evaluate the anterior chamber of the eye as a novel and superior transplantation site for pancreatic islets. The hypothesis is that the anterior chamber of the eye will need much less islets to achieve normoglycemia, that local immunosuppression in the eye will be sufficient to avoid rejection and that the status of the transplant can be monitored over time. Locally applied immunosuppressive drugs constitutes a major advantage avoiding all potential negative side effects of such powerful drugs given systemically.    </p>