The molecules in our bodies form a unique fingerprint of our health, a finding that Craig Wheelock uses to detect disease and develop personalised therapies. Meet one of the new professors of Karolinska Institutet who will participate in this year’s installation ceremony at Aula Medica on 8 October.
Text: Karin Tideström, for KI’s installation ceremony booklet 2026
Craig Wheelock specialises in metabolomics – the study of the thousands of molecules that shape the biochemistry and physiology of who we are. By decoding each person’s unique chemistry, he hopes to be able to detect disease earlier and follow its course more closely.
Photo: Erik Flyg
“Together, the molecules form a fingerprint of our health, showing what’s happening beneath the surface long before we feel unwell,” he says.
His research group’s main tool is mass spectrometry, a sensitive technology that can measure thousands of molecules in blood, urine or tissue. A variant of the technique also allows them to visualise the exact location of individual chemicals in tissue, helping them understand how treatments work and how exposure to pollutants affects human health.
So far, their results have shown that a handful of molecules in urine can reveal the type of asthma a person has, and that the balance between specific blood lipids and steroids can identify people with poorly controlled asthma and predict an asthma attack up to five years in advance. He hopes that such tests will one day become routine, enabling doctors to match each patient to the right treatment and improve their quality of life.
About Craig Wheelock
Professor of Metabolomics at the Institute of Environmental Medicine as of 1 June 2026
Craig Wheelock was born in California, USA, in 1971. He completed his undergraduate degree in chemistry and marine biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1994, taking a Master’s degree in marine sciences at the same university in 1996. In 2002, he earned a PhD in agricultural and environmental chemistry at UC Davis. Following his postdoc period at UC Davis and Kyoto University, Japan, he joined Karolinska Institutet in 2006. For many years, he was a visiting professor of metabolomic epidemiology at the Gunma University in Japan.
