Research at Oslo University Hospital

A consortium of University of Oslo, The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI) has been granted 19.09 MNOK (about U.S. $2.2M) for a period of three years from the Research Council of Norway through the GLOBVAC (Global Health Vaccination and Research) program for the development of broadly neutralizing antibodies as HIV prevention products. Teams on three continents will work to engineer and optimize antibodies to extend their half-life, an improvement designed to increase the duration of antibody activity and potentially lead to longer intervals between protective doses. The consortium is led by UiO.

The program is headed by Jan Terje Andersen, associate professor at the University of Oslo and leader of The Laboratory of Adaptive Immunity and Homeostasis at the Department of Immunology at Oslo University Hospital.

Funding of research-based innovation in Helse Sør-Øst is intended to provide financial opportunities for good ideas that have been developed through research activities at the hospitals and private institutions in the region. The ideas must be based on research results with the potential for commercialisation and/or benefit for society. 

Application deadline is Thursday, September 5th 2019, 16:00.

Funding of ideas and inventions in this context involves financing an innovation process, that is to say that the innovation funds will be used to support activities that are linked to defined milestones in the innovation process and which ensure that the development of the idea is continued towards implementation.

The South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority (Helse Sør-Øst RHF) hereby announces a call for applications for health research in this region. The total funding available for this call is approximately 130 million Norwegian kroner.

Application deadline is Thursday, September 5th 2019, 16:00.

The following research categories are available for funding of projects starting in 2020:
PhD fellowships, Postdoctoral fellowships, Career fellowships, Support for clinical research projects, Open project support

In a recent article in Nature Communications, published online on the 28^thof June, 2019, PhD student Marte Sneeggen and her coworkers at the Institute for Cancer Research and the Center for Cancer Cell Reprogramming (CanCell) identify a new mechanism how the tumor suppressor WDFY2 prevents metastasis by controlling recycling of the matrix metalloproteinase MT1-MMP

One of the most serious complications of cancer is the ability of tumors to form metastases. In most cases, the primary tumor can be treated, whereas metastasis is still the major cause of cancer mortality.

The project Protons contra cancer (PROCCA) was selected as one out of eight new convergence environments that receive funding from UiO: Life Science this year. The convergence environment consists of interdisciplinary research groups that address major challenges within health and environment. The PROCCA consortium intends to create an excellent platform for collaborative efforts in proton therapy research in Oslo, and consists of research groups from several departments at UiO and OUS.

The consortium is headed by Eirik Malinen, Department of Physics, UiO, and Department of Medical Physics, OUS. At Institute for Cancer Research, Åslaug Helland, Department of Genetics, is one of the principal investigators, and Randi Syljuåsen and Heidi Lyng at Department of Radiation Biology are collaborators.

In competition between 30 very good applicants, the hospital's external Scientific Advisory Board has selected three new strategic research areas for Oslo University Hospital.

Personalized treatment is central to all three areas; intestinal microflora treatment as part of personalized medicine, ex vivo drug testing as a basis for personalized treatment of intestinal cancer and cell-based immunotherapy against cancer.

The initiatives are led by Johannes Espolin Roksund Hov, Ragnhild A. Lothe and Karl-Johan Malmberg.

The Scientific Adisory Board members were impressed by the high quality of the applications in general and identified several innovative research approaches.

Each cell contains several thousand unique lipid molecules. There are several lipid classes based on lipids having various head groups (e.g. choline, ethanolamine, serine or inositol), whereas differences in hydrophobic fatty acyl chains give rise to a diversity of species within each class. By using mass spectrometry analysis it is now possible to quantify approx. 1000 lipid species in one sample.

In order to stimulate excellent research and draw attention to the hospital's research activity, Oslo University Hospital reward outstanding publications every half-year.

Six research groups were awarded for their excellent papers published during the second half-year of 2018 on June 7th in the large auditorium at Ullevål sykehus. Each group received NOK 50.000 for use in further research. The prize winners gave short presentations.

The six selected articles are of especially high quality, and they present important finding on both-short and long-term scales. The works reflect the good quality and the interdisciplinarity that characterises several research environments at Oslo University Hospital. The research is a fundamental condition for the institution to maintain and strenghten the quality in the patient treatment.