Radiumhemmet - Karolinska Institute
OVERVIEW
Radiumhemmet is a leading centre for non-surgical cancer treatment and radiotherapy research institution that is part of the Karolinska Institute, and is located in Solna, just north of Stockholm.
It was founded in 1910, as an independent clinic for delivering radium treatment to cancer patients. Backed by philanthropic funding, it was located on two rented floors of an apartment building in Kungsholmen, central Stockholm, and initially equipped with 10 beds, one roentgen unit, and a supply of radium.
One of the two founding figures was Gösta Forssell, who, in 1906 had been appointed to lead the recently established of Diagnostic Roentgen Laboratory at Stockholm’s Serafimer Hospital, popularly known as ‘Serafen’. Forssell was convinced that radiation treatment had major potential as a cancer therapy, having worked, while still a medical student, as an assistant to Thor Stenbeck, a Swedish radiologist/roentgenologist who, together with Tage Sjögren, became the first person to record using radium to cure cancer ‒ a basal cell carcinoma ‒ in 1899 (only a year after radium was first discovered by Marie Curie).
In 1908 Forssell had taken the initiative to set up a therapeutic X-Ray facility in a room in the basement of the hospital. He did this with the support of Johan Berg, who was Professor of Surgery at Serafen, and was the second key figure behind the founding of Radiumhemmet, two years later, as an independent institution with its own premises. That same year, 1910, Berg also founded the Swedish Cancer Society, and set up its Stockholm branch, which took over the running of Radiumhemmet 1911 ‒ a role it continued until 1937.
With demand for its services rapidly growing, in 1916 Radiumhemmet moved to larger premises in the south of Stockholm, owned by the City Council, which housed 34 beds, four roentgen units and an outpatient clinic. The move to much larger purpose-built premises at its current site, as part of the newly established Karolinska Institute in Solna, was made in 1938.
That move was made possible by substantial funding from the ‘[Jubilee Fund]'(https://www.uicc.org/membership/cancer-society-stockholm), dedicated to combating cancer and promoting cancer research, which had been established 10 years earlier, to mark the 70th birthday of King Gustav V. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3987078/)
Radiumhemmet has made important contributions to the development of radiation therapy over the years. Forssell’s first publication came out in 1909, and the results were presented internationally in Paris in 1910. Between 1909 and 1950 researchers affiliated to the institute published 560 scientific papers ‒ a major achievement, particularly in an era where scientific publications were much more rare than they are now.
In those early days, the impact was particularly important in gynaecological cancers. The “so-called Stockholm method” of treating cervical cancer, described in a 1935 article in Acta Radiologica, was developed by Forssell in 1914.
James Hayman, who in 1917 was appointed, alongside Forssell, to lead Radiumhemmet’s newly established gynaecological clinic, developed the first staging system for gynaecological cancer in 1928. This system which is seen as a forerunner of the current FIGO staging system and of TNM classification systems in general
The institute had a meticulous approach to research and treatment. Of note, in 1920 it appointed the radio physicist Rolf Sievert ‒ who gave his name to the SI unit that measures the amount of radiation absorbed by a person ‒ to help with efforts to better control and fine-tune and the radiation dosing. Four years later, Sievert was put in charge of Radiumhemmet’s newly established Department of Radiophysics.
It also paid attention to the recording of results, setting up an Archives and Statistics department in 1921, which meant, inter alia, that the 1935 paper on “the so-called Stockholm method” was able to report on the results of 3,000 cases of uterine cancer that had been treated using “a uniform method”, and under “uniform control”.
Other areas in which Radiumhemmet has made a particularly strong contribution to oncology include the development of radiosurgery techniques for brain tumours. The Gamma Knife was invented in Sweden, and in 1974 Radiumhemmet became the second treatment centre in the world to use this treatment technique ‒ the first having been installed at a small private hospital in Stockholm.
In 1984 Radiumhemmet underwent a complete renovation. Working in association with the Karolinska Cancer Centre, established at the same site in 1998, it remains an international leader in the treatment and research of cancer.
