Successful startup meeting for STINT/China-Sweden mobility
In 2020, SciLifeLab researcher Mathias Uhlén (KTH) received funding from The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT) to initiate a 3-year joint China- Sweden mobility collaboration, focusing on precision medicine advancements. Due to the pandemic, the start of the project was postponed but now a first meeting has taken place on August 16, with SciLifeLab DDLS Fellow Wen Zhong as the liaison person between the two parties.
Accounting for one-fifth of the world’s population, the large biobanks in China can provide unique advantages for data-centric precision medicine. Sweden, on the other hand, recognized for its universal healthcare and large population-based prospective, is very well positioned at the forefront of precision medicine. By combining the advantages of Sweden and China, this international collaboration can serve as a solid foundation for data-driven precision medicine.
As the Chinese partners we find Tao Xu, Deputy Director of Guang Zhou Laboratory and a Distinguished Member of Both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World. Prof. Xu is also in charge of several large-scale cohorts (> 1million participants) as well as disease studies in China. His primary research focuses on the mechanisms of membrane trafficking and the development of cell biophysics techniques. In recent years, Prof. Xu and his team have also made breakthrough advancements in areas such as super-resolution microscopy imaging technology, ultra-sensitive single-molecule detection technology, single-cell multi-omics technology and imaging flow cytometry based on microfluidic technology
The meeting was very successful, bringing together a diverse group of researchers from relevant fields. This included researchers from KTH, KI, UU, and LiU, as well as a Chinese partner, Jianfeng Liu. Prof. Liu is the Dean of College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology and a Director of Key Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics, Ministry of Education. Liu’s group mainly focuses on the structure and function of membrane receptors, including G protein coupled receptor (GPCR) and ion channel and now focuses on the development of nanobody as well as membrane protein detection technologies.
