With prominent research institutes and leading pharmacy companies, Stockholm is world-renowned for its achievements in life science. With a large number of ongoing research projects, international investors are scouting the Stockholm market for tomorrow's blockbusters

The organisation Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab Stockholm) was set up last year with the aspiration to become the leading center for large-scale biosciences in the world and to strengthen the Swedish capital's life science global position.

SciLifeLab is a coordinated effort of four universities in Stockholm and Uppsala: Stockholm University, the Karolinska Institutet, The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and Uppsala University.

Its focus on finding cross-disciplinary synergies is one of Sci Life Lab's primary strengths. Researchers in biology and medicine, for example, are working with innovators from the Royal Institute of Technology.

Much of the organisation's work is being performed in partnership with industry.

Here we list five pioneering SciLifeLab research projects with the aim of better understanding human biology and disease and subsequently improving the treatment of patients.

• New potential biomarkers discovered for kidney toxicity and prostate cancer
Based on the world’s largest resource of antibodies to human proteins, SciLifeLab researchers have initiated efforts to explore the valuable biobank cohorts collected in Sweden during recent years using new technology platforms.

• Discovery of a new inherited neurometabolic disorder
Around 10,000 different monogenic disorders are known, but less than 4,000 disease genes have been identified. Massively parallel DNA sequencing is drastically changing this scenario.

• Sequencing and assembly of the largest and most complex genome to date – the Norway spruce
Conifers are dominant plant species in many ecosystems, including large areas in Sweden. The ambition is to produce a genome sequence to increase our under- standing of conifer biology and evolution.

• The Human Proteome Project (HPP)
A human proteome project has recently been launched to characterize the proteins encoded by the human genome. The aim is to characterize the building blocks of human beings and to use the knowledge to understand human biology and disease and to subsequently improve the treatment of patients.

• The Brain Atlas
The unique collection of antibodies generated within the human protein atlas (HPA) program opens new venues to systematically explore regional and cellular distribution of many proteins in the healthy, developing, and diseased nervous system.

Source: SciLifeLab Stockholm, Annual report 2011

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This article was published in collaboration with Stockholm Business Region.

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