Human Genetics & Embryology

JoakIim Dillner

JoakIim Dillner
Professor, Department of Laboratory Medicine
Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

Biography

Joakim Dillner is professor in infectious disease epidemiology at KarolinskaInstitutet. His research is focused on cancer screening and tumor virology, especially human papillomavirus (HPV). He supervises several very large trials of HPV screening and Nordic follow-up studies of HPV vaccination and has experience in running international networking efforts for large-scale molecular epidemiological studies for evaluation of the role of infections in cancer. He is well-known as PI of Swedescreen, the first started randomised trial of HPV-screening (since 1997) and as PI of the WHO HPV LabNet Global Reference Laboratory (since 2006). Since 2012 he has also taken over the International Papillomavirus Reference Center. Professor Dillner has published more than 300 original research papers.

Research Interest

Professor Joakim Dillner began research in tumor virology in 1982, working with George Klein on Epstein-Barr virus. Since 1989 he is conducting Human Papillomavirus (HPV) research in the areas of molecular biology, immunology and vaccinology, clinical virology and epidemiology. He is well-known as PI of Swedescreen, the first started randomised trial of HPV-screening (since 1997) and as PI of the WHO HPV LabNet Global Reference Laboratory (since 2006). Since 2012 he has also taken over the International Papillomavirus Reference Center. The center was founded by Dr. E.M. deVilliers of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg and has during 1985-2012 received and resequenced new isolates of HPV and assigned the unique HPV types numbers for new HPV types, an activity that since 2012 is now performed by Dr. Dillner. He has led several large EU consortia on infections and cancer, notably ERICBSB (Evaluation of Risk of Infections in Cancer using Biological Specimen Banks) and VIRASKIN (Viruses and skin cancer risk) in the Fifth Framework program and CCPRB (Cancer Control using Population-based Registries and Biobanks) in the Sixth Framework program. He has led the Swedish National Biobanking program at the start in 2002, and upon re-organization as the BioBanking& Molecular Resource Infrastructure of Sweden (BBMRI.se) in 2009