Thomas Karikari, PhD

Thomas K. Karikari, PhD, is a scientist at the Clinical Neurochemistry Laboratory at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. His main research interest is to further understand molecular and biochemical basis of pathological changes in the Alzheimer brain and apply this knowledge to develop new biofluid-based diagnostic tools for clinical use. To this end, he uses advanced and highly sensitive clinical chemistry techniques that allow quantification of tiny differences in biomarker concentrations in blood and cerebrospinal fluid. Thomas has received major scientific awards for his discovery and development of blood p-tau biomarkers, including from the Swedish Alzheimer Foundation and the Nordic Federation for Clinical Chemistry. He completed his undergraduate studies in biochemistry at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, followed by a Master's degree in pharmaceutical biotechnology in Leicester, England. Thomas received his PhD in 2018 from Warwick university in Coventry, England, where he developed and applied biochemical, molecular and cell biology approaches to investigate functional and structural consequences of genetic mutations in the MAPT gene associated with different tauopathies. At the end of his PhD, Thomas was a visiting scholar at Harvard Medical School where he investigated kinetic cytotoxicity of aggregated tau. He then moved to Gothenburg, Sweden, as a postdoctoral fellow in clinical chemistry under the mentorship of Professors Kaj Blennow and Henrik Zetterberg.