Research at Oslo University Hospital

ESMO - the European Society for Medical Oncology - is a leading European professional organisation for medical oncology, comprising over 19,000 oncology professionals from over 150 countries.

Held under the tagline “Securing access to optimal cancer care”, the ESMO 2018 Congress takes place on 19 to 23 October in Munich, Germany.

Therese Sørlie - head of the Department of Molecular Genetics and leader of the Breast tumor initiation and progression group - is in the programme committe for basic research at ESMO, and she will chair several discussions during the conference. Sørlie has been interviewed about current trends that will be covered by the meeting for popular Norwegian health newpaper "Dagens Medisin", and she presents her views in an article entitled "Towards less cancer treatment".

Professor Guro Elisabeth Lind, head of the Epigentics research group at the Department of Molecular Oncology, has been elected as new leader in "Forskerforbundet" - The Norwegian Association of Researchers, taking over January 1st 2019.

Lind is a former head of "Akademiet for yngre forskere" (The Young Academy of Norway) and has also been a local representative for Forskerforbundet. She will be the first female leader since the 80's, and replaces Petter Aaslestad, who has been in charge of the Research Association for the last six years (two periods).

"I was very much in doubt, first and foremost because I am an active researcher with a research group and exciting projects. But I am also actively engaged in research policy and could not say no to this exciting challenge", Lind says to Khrono.

Although the mechanisms that mediate chromosome condensation have been extensively studied for decades, little is known about the molecular mechanisms that initiate and control chromosome condensation at mitosis entry. Furthermore, how cells discriminate between normal chromosomes and potentially harmful non-chromosomal DNA during mitosis remains mysterious.

A collaborative work by the groups of Jorrit M. Enserink (OuH), Pierre Chymkowitch (OuH) and Yves Barral (ETH, Zurich, Switzerland) suggesting that centromeres play a so-far under-explored role in chromosome condensation and immunity mechanisms is published in Cell and now available online.

In a recent paper in EMBO Journal, postdoc Maja Radulovic and her co-workers in Harald Stenmark's group reveal a novel mechanism that promotes cell survival, namely repair of damaged lysosomes.

Work in Harald Stenmark's group has previously shown that a protein machinery known as endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) mediates important cellular functions such as lysosomal downregulation of growth factor receptors and sealing of the nascent nuclear envelope during mitotic exit 

Now, postdoc Maja Radulovic and her co-workers in Stenmark's group have found that ESCRT proteins repair damaged lysosomes, and that this is essential for cell viability upon lysosomal damage. Compounds that selectively damage lysosomes of cancer cells are in clinical trials as cancer drugs, and the newly discovered mechanism may provide us with tools to increase the efficacy of such drugs.

Anders Jahre's Awards for Medical Research honor research of outstanding quality in basic and clinical medicine. The prizes are awarded by the University of Oslo and are among the largest within Nordic biomedical research. 

Espen Melum is the 2018 receipient of the Anders Jahre's medical award to young researchers for his work on primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC). He shares the prize with Martin Roelsgaard Jakobsen, Århus University.

The prize ceremony takes place on Thursday 11th of October at 18 hrs in the University aula at Karl Johans gate, while the Jahre lectures are held on Wednesday 10th of October at 14 hrs at Domus Medica.

NORMENT's director Ole Andreassen has received the Honorary Award 2018 from the Bergesen Foundation for his outstanding research on psychotic disorders.

Professor Andreassen receives the prize for his contribution within the field of mental disorders research, both also for his role as a director of NORMENT. Through the NORMENT centre, Andreassen has created a strong and multidisciplinary research environment, and he has succeeded in combining different scientific and methodological approaches in his research.

The paper entitled "Light-enhanced VEGF₁₂₁/rGel: A tumor targeted modality with vascular and immune-mediated efficacy" by Anette Weyergang et al. includes a collaboration with the Rosenblum lab at MD Anderson Cancer Center and the core facility for advanced light microscopy at the Institute for Cancer Research (OUS).

The manuscript was published in Journal of Controlled Release a highly recognized journal in the field of delivery science and technology.

A new study by a team from the Institute for Cancer Research and the Norwegian Centre of Excellence CanCell provides novel in sight in the mechanisms by which cells maintain synchrony in their biosynthetic processes. Using the model organism budding yeast, Herrera et al discovered a new regulatory mechanism by which cells may keep protein synthesis in synchrony with cell division. In brief, they discovered that a protein called cyclin dependent kinase (Cdk1), which is the master regulator of the cell cycle, localizes to tRNA genes during a brief period in the cell cycle. The results have recently (22 September) been published in the prestigious journal Nucleic Acids Research.