Mathias Uhlén, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, is one of the confirmed speakers at the 29th Swedish Conference on Macromolecular Structure & Function, Sweprot 2026, which takes place in beautiful Tällberg, Dalarna, from June 12–15.

He will provide insights into the ongoing work within the Human Protein Atlas project, a program initiated in 2003 with the aim of mapping all proteins in human cells, tissues, and organs. All data in the knowledge resource is published as open access.

What is happening in the HPA project right now?

– SciLifeLab (Science for Life Laboratory) hosts the Human Protein Atlas consortium and recently the infrastructure received a generous support from the non-profit Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation for a research program named Alpha Cell. SciLifeLab will take advantage of the convergence of advanced AI, large inventories of molecular data and disruptive imaging technologies to map cells at an unprecedented molecular scale. These molecular maps will lay the foundation for predictive AI cells models.

– The program aims to leverage Human Protein Atlas (HPA) data to create a foundational generative AI model capable of predicting the metabolic functions of human cells. This phase serves as a proof of concept, using high-quality cellular and subcellular multi-omic data to identify which molecular information is most predictive of cell behavior and where critical biological data gaps still exist.

In your perspective, do you think Sweden is a strong player in biotech and biomedicine, and what does the future look like?

– Sweden has a long history of successful companies in biotechnology and medicine, with several notable international companies, such as Pharmacia, Astra, Elekta, Phadia, Biacore, LKB, SOBI and many others. Recently the commercial success of the Uppsala company Olink can be noted. Only in the last decade more than 500 billion Swedish crowns have been realised fof Sweden-based companies, mainly by investments of American companies.  Thanks to the teachers privilege making academic innovators owning their own inventions, many start-ups have been seen in the last decades. This means that Sweden has become a hub for life science star-ups in Europe.

Have you attended Sweprot before? What are you looking forward to?

– I have not attended Sweprot before. However, the program looks excellent, and I am very much looking forward to the meeting.

Confirmed speakers at Sweprot 2026