Research at Oslo University Hospital

What happens to skin cells when they are confronted with blood? A team of researchers from Oslo University Hospital, led by Emma Lång and Stig Ove Bøe, performed experiments on blood-deprived cells that were subsequently exposed to blood serum. Remarkably, all the cells started to move and grow in the same direction as soon as the blood serum was added. Assistant Professor Liesbeth Janssen and student Marijke Valk from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) developed a matching simulation model, revealing new insights into the mechanisms of wound healing. The results have recently been published in the journal Nature Communications.

On Monday September 3rd professor Harald Stenmark from the Department of Molecular Biology at the Institute for Cancer Research will receive the prestigious University of Oslo Research Award for 2018 during the annual anniversary party in the University Aula. Stenmark has been interviewed by Martin Toft for the UiO newpaper Uniforum, where his very successful ongoing career is chronicled. The article is entitled "Hunting for the Achilles heels of Cancer".
Together with other award winners Stenmark gave a short lecture about his research in the library in the Vilhelm Bjerknes building the same Monday.

Thomas Fleischer and Xavier Tekpli from the Cancer Genome Variation group, led by Vessela Kristensen at the Department of Cancer Genetics, IKF, together with their collaborators from the NCMM, Toni Hurtado and Anthony Mathelier, and Professor Arnoldo Frigessi from UiO identified methylated regions (CpGs) that show remarkably and reproducibly conserved patterns of association to gene expression in the DNA from breast tumors in three independent breast cancer cohorts. 
The article - entitled “DNA methylation at enhancers identifies distinct breast cancer lineages” has been selected for the Editors’ Highlights webpage of recent research on Genomes and Epigenomes, put together by the editors at Nature Communications.

Imatinib treatment has been very successful in gastrointestinal stromal tumour (GIST), where an initial treatment response is seen for the majority of the patients. However, over time the tumours evolve and get resistant to the treatment. GISTs are characterised by mutations in tyrosine kinase receptors KIT and PDGFRA, which are important for treatment decisions. There is a need to establish patient-friendly means/methods to obtain tumour material for mutational testing, which can ultimately improve the treatment of GIST patients.

Oslo University Hospital researchers Geir Ringstad and Per Kristian Eide have recently been interviewed by the major national newpaper VG for an article entitled "Norwegian researchers: Sleep may slow down dementia". The story is based on results from paper published in the journal "JCI Insight", entitled "Brain-wide glymphatic enhancement and clearance in humans assessed with MRI", where Ringstad (Dept of Radiology) and Eide (Dept of Radiology and Dept of Neurosurgery) are first and last authors. 
The study provides in vivo evidence of access to all human brain subregions of a substance administered intrathecally. Clearance of the tracer substance was delayed in the dementia cohort. These observations open new prospects concerning intrathecal treatment regimens, extravascular contrast-enhanced MRI, and assessment of brain clearance function.

Tumor hypoxia promotes metastasis and resistance to radiotherapy in prostate cancer. An imaging method to assess hypoxia at diagnosis can help to select patients for intensified treatment and avoid overtreatment of indolent, low-risk disease; but has not been successfully developed for this disease. In this paper, postdocTord Hompland in Heidi Lyng's group at Department of Radiation Biology and his co-workers present a novel method to visualize hypoxia based on diagnostic, multiparametric diffusion weighted MR images (DW-MRI). The work is part of an ongoing collaboration between the group and the FuncProst research team, headed by Therese Seierstad and Knut Håkon Hole at Division of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at OUS. The method can easily be translated into clinical practice, and a large scale, prospective evaluation of the method is planned for prostate cancer.

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded a Starting Grant 2018 of EUR 1,5 million to Johannes Roksund Hov at the Norwegian PSC Research Center at University of Oslo and Oslo University Hospital. The project StopAutoimmunity aims to identify gut microbial factors driving the autoimmune liver disease primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC).
With 3170 applications, 2018 Starting Grants were in very high demand. 403 talented early career researchers have been awarded European Research Council grants. Scientists will benefit from EUR 603 million in total and up to EUR 1.5 million each, to create their own research teams and conduct pioneering projects. The grants are part of the 'excellent science' pillar of the EU's current Research and Innovation programme, Horizon 2020. 

Binding of growth factors to their receptors is known to cause endocytosis and degradation of the receptors and their ligands by a mechanism that involves the endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) machinery. Failure of this mechanism can lead to cancer development. In a recent paper in Nature Communications, a team led by project leaders Eva Wenzel and Camilla Raiborg at Institute for Cancer Research and Centre for Cancer Cell Reprogramming has used advanced microscopy methods to reveal the dynamics of ESCRT recruitment and formation of multivesicular endosomes (MVEs) into which the receptor-ligand complexes are sorted for subsequent degradation.