Harris group

Helena Erlandsson Harris leads the Harris group. She did her undergraduate training at the University of Uppsala and PhD at the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. She was appointed professor at Karolinska institutet in 2014. She was head of the Broegelmann Research Laboratory and Professor in Immunology at the University of Bergen in 2022 until 2026.

The group focuses in juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), a disease that each year 15 per 100 000 children in the Nordic countries are diagnosed and is characterised by childhood onset of chronic joint inflammation. There is a great need for improved diagnostic and prognostics tools as well as new therapeutic options. In addition to joint inflammation, destruction of joint tissue and pain are hallmarks of the disease. An improved, in depth understanding of the molecular mechanisms driving these three hallmarks forms the basis for development of diagnostic/prognostic biomarker tests as well as development of new, subgroup specific therapy – precision medicine. 

To that end the groups research focuses on the protein HMGB1, a prototypic alarmin, a nuclear protein during tissue homeostasis that when released can induce cell migration, cytokine production, cell differentiation and regeneration. All important features of the inflammatory response. Our research has clearly demonstrated HMGB1 as a mediator of inflammation. In arthritis, HMGB1 mediates inflammation, destruction and pain. The group utilises molecular and cellular functional studies, to investigate the the potential of treatments targeting HMGB1 improves these three arthritis hallmarks.