KTH Royal Institute of Technology · Stockholm

Engineering proteins & cells for next-generation therapeutics

We work at the intersection of synthetic and systems biology — discovering gene therapy vehicles, bispecific therapeutics, and the mammalian cell factories to produce them.

68+

Publications

26.5k+

Citations

Spin-outs

Team Members

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Research

Four pillars of engineering

From molecule to manufacture — our projects span the full drug development chain, integrating discovery with scalable bioproduction.

AAV & Gene Therapy

Engineering novel AAV capsid variants with improved selectivity and productivity for curative gene therapies. Modifying capsids for enhanced tropism and scalable production in HEK293 systems.

Capsid engineering · Tropism · HEK293

Bispecific Therapeutics

Developing AffiMabs and bispecific antibodies for cancer immunotherapy and autoimmune diseases. Combining Affibody molecules with monoclonal antibodies for targeted immune modulation.

AffiMabs · CD40 · Immunotherapy

Cell Line Engineering

Harnessing transcriptomics and CRISPR-Cas9 to build mammalian cell factories — CHO and HEK293 lines optimised for protein secretion, viral vector production, and continuous manufacturing.

CHO · CRISPR · Secretory pathway

Epitope Mapping

Mammalian cell display combined with automated oligo design, deep sequencing, and alanine scanning for residue-level conformational epitope determination of therapeutic antibodies.

Cell display · Deep sequencing · Alanine scan

Team

Our people

A multidisciplinary team of protein engineers, cell biologists, systems biologists, and virologists at AlbaNova University Center.

Principal Investigator

Docent

PostDoc

Doctoral Student

Lab Engineer

Master Student

Innovation Milieu

GeneNova

A Vinnova-funded innovation milieu (2021–2026) coordinated by KTH, bringing together world-leading Swedish expertise in cell biology, pharmacology, systems biology, neurology, drug discovery, industrial biotechnology, and mathematics to innovate AAV bioproduction — aiming for order-of-magnitude improvements over current state of the art.

The collaboration aligns academic faculties with global commercial technology and service providers towards a single goal: enabling sustainable access to curative AAV-based gene therapies for patients.

Partners Alfa Laval AstraZeneca Biotage CombiGene Karolinska Institutet KTH Uppsala University Vironova Ziccum

genenova.org

Publications

Publication record

68Publications

2005–2026Date range

—Unique journals

26,505Citations (Scholar) ↗

Topics AAV / gene therapy Antibody engineering Epitope mapping Cell engineering Protein expression Omics ★Senior / corresponding author

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Innovation & Translation

From lab to business

We have been fortunate to be part of co-founding seven companies translating academic discoveries into soon to be therapeutics and enabling technologies.

Atlas Antibodies

Antibody reagents for proteomics research

atlasantibodies.com

Alligator Bioscience

Therapeutic antibody development · formerly Atlas Therapeutics

alligatorbioscience.com

Abclon Inc.

CAR-T & antibody therapies · KOSDAQ · Phase 3

abclon.com

StrikePharma

Cancer immunotherapy

strikepharma.com

Labrock AB

Biotech consultancy

Auweai AB

AI-enabled precision medicine

auweai.com

AareBio AB

Biopharmaceutical development

2024 Biotech Builders Award

2021 SwedenBIO Life Science Star

Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences

Contact

Get in touch

We are always interested in collaborations, visiting researchers, and prospective PhD students and postdocs.

johan.rockberg@biotech.kth.se Google Scholar KTH Profile

Visit us

Division of Protein Technology
School of Engineering Sciences in Chemistry,
Biotechnology and Health (CBH)
KTH Royal Institute of Technology

AlbaNova University Center
Roslagstullsbacken 21, Plan 3
SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden