HONG KONG, Feb. 2-- Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, one of the world's leading medical universities, said here Monday that it will establish its own research base in Hong Kong.

The initiative is made possible by a donation of 50 million U.S. dollars by Hong Kong-based businessman Ming Wai Lau. This is one of the largest private donations ever received by Karolinska Institutet.

The Ming Wai Lau Center for Regeneration Medicine will comprise two nodes, one in Stockholm and one in Hong Kong, and will allow scientists from Hong Kong, the mainland, and around the world to work together in an independent research environment under the auspices of Karolinska Institutet, said Anders Hamsten, vice- chancellor of the institute.

Founded in 1810, the Karolinska Institutet has long been recognized as one of the world's foremost medical universities. It 's responsible for more than 40 percent of Sweden's academic research in the medical field. Adding to this, Karolinska's Nobel Assembly chooses the Nobel laureates in medicine or physiology each year.

Chief Executive C Y Leung said he welcomed the establishment of the Karolinska Institutet's overseas research branch in Hong Kong.

"Hong Kong will certainly benefit from the Ming Wai Lau Center in the years to come. Our health-care system faces an aging population. That reality will bring about a long-term escalation in chronic diseases. Regenerative medicine can help us. Stem-cell research can accelerate the development of effective pharmaceutical products," Leung said.

The center's research focus will be on three major disease areas in which Karolinska Institutet and several Hong Kong universities possess unique expertise. One of its objectives is to use stem cell technology to rebuild damaged tissue, focusing, for example, on heart tissue damaged by infarction, spinal injury and finding a cure for Parkinson's disease, and on repairing a damaged liver using stem cell transplants.