The Tobias Foundation: Thirty-Three Years of Building Hope

The Tobias Foundation was established in 1992 with the purpose of ”supporting the establishment of a Swedish bone marrow and stem cell registry and advancing research on diseases that can be treated with bone marrow or stem cell transplantation.”

The Tobias Register, founded the same year, now has over 250,000 registered potential donors, covering a majority of Swedes in need of a donor match. To date, more than 2,000 bone marrow and stem cell transplants have been performed with donors from the Tobias Register. More than half of the recipients have resided outside Sweden, making the register an important global partner in transplantation efforts.

So far, the Foundation has donated 120 million SEK to research.

In 2020, a 10 MSEK grant was awarded to Magnus Tobiasson and Eva Hellström Lindberg for research on early detection of potential relapse, enabling more patients to be cured. The study is conducted in collaboration with all transplantation centers in the Nordic countries.

In 2023, Mattias Carlsten at Karolinska Institutet was awarded a five-year grant of 5 MSEK for research aimed at improving outcomes and quality of life for transplant patients.

All activities of the Tobias Foundation are financed through donations and returns on the foundation’s capital.