Rockberg Lab — KTH Royal Institute of Technology

News

Latest from the lab

September 2026

Hannes Thorell nails his doctoral thesis

Congratulations to Hannes for completing and nailing his doctoral thesis in the traditional Swedish spikning ceremony! A major milestone on the road to his PhD defence.

August 11, 2026

Johan receives Distinguished Innovator grant from Novo Nordisk Foundation

Great summer holiday news! Johan has been awarded the prestigious Distinguished Innovator grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation (7.6 MDKK, 3 years) for the development of kidney-selective gene therapy vectors.

Rockberg Lab group day at Carl Eldh's studio

June 16, 2026

Group day at Carl Eldh's art workshop

The team enjoyed a day out at sculptor Carl Eldh's historic studio in Stockholm — a well-deserved break from the lab surrounded by beautiful art.

June 8, 2026

ESACT 2026 in Salzburg — 50 years of mammalian cell culture engineering

As part of the Scientific Committee, Johan reports from the 50th anniversary of ESACT in Salzburg. Lots of excitement and great to see so many presentations on gene therapies as well as biologics. The gala dinner featured a fabulous 70s theme.

Mikel Roscales presenting his PhD half-time seminar

June 4, 2026

Mikel Roscales presents PhD half-time seminar

Congratulations to Mikel for successfully presenting his PhD half-time seminar on cell factory engineering for optimising the production of rAAV-based gene therapies.

May 28, 2026

Jesper Parra Narezo successfully presents his master thesis

Congratulations to Jesper for successfully defending his master thesis on protein engineering for development of tissue-selective viral vectors.

May 28, 2026

Jonas Löfvenberg successfully presents his master thesis

Congratulations to Jonas for successfully defending his master thesis on AAV replication and production for gene therapy applications.

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

Protein Engineering

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

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

27,823Citations (Scholar) ↗

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

No publications match your search.

Doctoral and licentiate theses from the Rockberg Lab, defended at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.

11 theses total ◆ Main supervisor ○ Co-supervisor ◇ Licentiate

11 ◆ 2026

Engineering of viral surfaces and production methods for gene therapy applications

Thorell H

Doctoral thesis· ISBN 978-91-8106-680-7· DiVA ↗

10 ◆ 2024

Methods for engineering and characterization of advanced therapeutics

Karlander M

Doctoral thesis· ISBN 978-91-8106-032-4· DiVA ↗

9 ◇ 2024

Improved candidate screening through tailored co-culture assays and precise tuning of protein expression

Aniander G

Licentiate thesis· ISBN 978-91-8040-963-6· DiVA ↗

8 ◆ 2023

Platforms and strategies harnessing signaling pathways of multifactorial diseases by multispecific antibodies

Mebrahtu A

Doctoral thesis· ISBN 978-91-8040-550-8· DiVA ↗

7 ◆ 2021

Strategies to improve and balance the expression levels of recombinant proteins in mammalian cell lines

Moradi Barzadd M

Doctoral thesis· ISBN 978-91-8040-075-6· DiVA ↗

6 ◆ 2021

Mammalian protein expression and characterization tools for next generation biologics

Thalén N

Doctoral thesis· ISBN 978-91-7873-927-1· DiVA ↗

5 ○ 2020

Engineering enzymes towards biotherapeutic applications using ancestral sequence reconstruction

Hendrikse NM (co-supervised)

Doctoral thesis· ISBN 978-91-7873-629-4· DiVA ↗

4 ◆ 2018

Methods for cell line and protein engineering

Lundqvist M

Doctoral thesis· ISBN 978-91-7729-757-4· DiVA ↗

3 ◆ 2017

Cell line and protein engineering tools for production and characterization of biologics

Volk AL

Doctoral thesis· ISBN 978-91-7729-497-9· DiVA ↗

2 ◆ 2017

Utilizing Solid Phase Cloning, Surface Display And Epitope Information for Antibody Generation and Characterization

Hu FJ

Doctoral thesis· ISBN 978-91-7729-353-8· DiVA ↗

1 ◆ 2008

Methods for Generation and Characterization of Monospecific Antibodies

Rockberg J

Doctoral thesis· ISBN 978-91-7415-139-8· DiVA ↗

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.