Niklas Björkström

Björkström leads a translational immunology group bridging Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital, combining advanced spatial and single-cell technologies with deeply characterised human tissues and clinical cohorts. As both professor and clinician-scientist, his integration within hospital environments provides the Cluster with a critical interface between R&D and healthcare implementation.

His research investigates how human immune cells are organised and function within tissues in health and disease, with particular expertise in tissue-resident lymphocytes, liver immunology, infection and cancer. Within the Cluster, these clinically anchored questions provide powerful settings for developing and applying emerging spatial technologies to understand disease mechanisms and identify predictive and therapeutically actionable tissue states.

Recent work has revealed tissue-specific non-heritable immune variation (Sci Immunol 2024), transitions between tissue-resident and circulating immune states (Nat Immunol 2025), and the reconstitution of tissue immunity following transplantation (Sci Transl Med 2026), demonstrating the group's ability to translate advanced immune profiling into clinically relevant human biology.

Björkström will also help lead the Cluster's translation of spatial biology toward precision diagnostics, connecting researchers, technology developers and industry with clinical pathology and healthcare environments. This two-way interface will enable emerging technologies to be evaluated against real clinical needs while allowing those needs to guide future technology development—providing a pathway from spatial discovery to clinically actionable knowledge.