At the Max IV facility in Lund, researchers can study everything from proteins to human tissue, and make discoveries beyond the capabilities of other methods. According to KI researcher Caroline Graff, her time at Max IV has given her Alzheimer’s research a new layer of knowledge.
Max IV is a national research infrastructure based outside Lund and a synchrotron light source facility, delivering very intense, controllable X-ray light to different experimental endstations called beamlines. Depending on the method, it is possible, for example, for scientists to determine protein structure, image tissue or map the location of different elements in a biological sample.
At Max IV , researchers have studied plaque from the carotid artery to understand processes underlying stroke, and the different elements in lung tissue in patients with pulmonary fibrosis. Other projects concern everything from drug development to research on universal donor blood.
Martin Moche , senior research infrastructure specialist at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics , coordinates a group of KI researchers who are using the BioMax beamline for protein crystallography. He believes that more researchers at KI could benefit from the facility.
“KI researchers are familiar, of course, with the imaging techniques available in their own fields, but they don’t always know what they can do with a synchrotron,” he says.
Caroline Graff , professor at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society and clinically active doctor, is one of the KI researchers to have recently started using Max IV.
Opportunities for Alzheimer’s research
Previously, she had little idea of the possibilities that the facility could offer her kind of research. This all changed at a meeting between Max IV and KI in the autumn of 2025, at which research was presented that had studied brain tissue from mice using Max IV.
This piqued the interest of Professor Graff and neuropathologist Inger Nennesmo , Department of Oncology-Pathology , both of whom have spent years studying the brain tissue of deceased Alzheimer’s patients to understand this disease and others affecting the brain.
“We figured that we’d have the chance to see things that we can’t even see down a microscope,” says Professor Graff. “It felt like we’d levelled up.”
Since the spring, Professor Graff’s research group has been using the NanoMax nanoprobe to study tiny sections of brain tissue from individuals who had died with different genetic forms of Alzheimer’s disease. This enables them the map the location of elements such as iron, zinc and copper in the tissue and compare the results with adjacent sections analysed using different methods at KI.
To date, the group has conducted experiments at Max IV on two occasions. They now wish to proceed with more genetic variants and have applied for new beamtime.
“We’ve seen things that we haven’t seen before,” says Professor Graff. “What we get here is yet another layer of knowledge.”
Dare to give it a go
The possibilities that Max IV and synchrotron light can offer researchers are, naturally, difficult to imagine for those who haven’t given the method a try. Dr Moche believes that the greatest threshold isn’t the technique or its practical application, it’s knowing what you can do there.
He would like to see more concrete and inspirational examples from medical research so that more researchers will discover the technique’s potential.
“If, say, you’re studying the lungs and see what others have done with lung tissue, you’ll understand.”
Professor Graff’s advice is to not start off by trying to understand the technique in its entirety, but to approach it on the basis of one’s own research gestion and make contact.
“Be curious, contact someone who works at Max IV, and dare to give it a go,” she says. “They’ve been incredibly welcoming and really helpful is getting this to work.”
How to book beam time at Max IV
To do experiments at Max IV, researchers or research groups must apply for beam time at one of the facility’s endstations or beamlines. The choice of beamline and method will depend on the research question.
Regular application cycles take place in February and September. For some types of project, researchers can apply for beamtime on a rolling basis .
Researchers who haven’t used Max IV before are advised to contact the facility to discuss their options. Beam time applications are made at the recurring call cycles.
