Research at Oslo University Hospital

The 2018 "Dr. Ragnar Mørk's legacy prize" goes to Kaisa Haglund, head of the "Cytokinesis in development and carcinogenesis project group" at the Department of Molecular Cell Biology, for her outstanding research on cell division and cancer..
This award of NOK 200.000 is annually given to scientists affiliated to the Norwegian Radium Hospital who have obtained important results within the field of cancer research.
The ceremony will take place on Friday November 23rd in seminar rooms 1+2 om the Research Building at Montebello, starting at 14:30.
Kaisa Haglund will then give a lecture about the research activities that has earned her the award.

The prestigious journal Nature Methods recently published an article by proteomics researchers at the Department of Immunology. "We describe a simple and affordable method for large-scale protein analysis and test the specificity of 6000 commercially available antibodies to human proteins" says Fridtjof Lund-Johansen, who led the study.
The findings are drawing attention, and the major national news outlet for health and medicine "Dagens Medisin" has covered the story.

Proteins are the building blocks of cells and tissues, and they operate in complex clockworks to exert a host of biological functions. The purpose of large-scale protein analysis, or proteomics, is to dissect these clockworks and understand how they operate. Most drugs act by modifying the function of one or more proteins, so there is good reason to believe that insight from proteomics research will open new avenues for therapy.

The latest issue of Molecular Oncology features an ImmunoFISH image from the article “Intratumor heterogeneity defines treatment resistant HER2+ breast tumors”, as their cover image.

In the article published in the same issue Inga H. Rye, post doc in the Russnes group, combined immunofluorescence and in situ hybridization (ImmunoFISH) on tissue sections and analyzed more than 13 000 single tumor cells from 37 HER2+ breast tumors. By a validated computational approach previously developed by the group (GoIFISH, Trinh et al. Genome Biology 2016), they found a subset of HER2+ breast carcinomas to exhibit substantial heterogeneity with regard to HER2 protein expression, HER2 gene copy number alteration, and estrogen receptor protein expression. 

The vast majority of primary prostate cancers are multifocal. The individual tumors within the prostate gland are known to have different aggressiveness and develop independently of one another, but little has been known about their genetic relationship.

Marthe Løvf and colleagues have performed the first large in-depth genomic heterogeneity study of primary prostate cancer and the results were published in the recognized journal European Urology earlier this month. The researchers performed exome sequencing of 89 tumor foci from 41 patients and demonstrated convincingly that the different foci within the same patient only exceptionally have any somatic gene mutations in common.

On 25 October, the Academy for Young Scientists will include 8 new members for the period 2018-2022. Among the carefully selected members is Helene Knævelsrud from Jorrit Enserink's group at the Department of Molecular Cell Biology. 

The Young Academy of Norway is open for talented, young researchers from all disciplines interested in working interdisciplinary and dedicating time to work with broader issues such as policy development and innovative research dissemination. Relevant candidates will have conducted independent research, gained a position within their discipline and be no older than 38 years old in the year of application. Equally importantly, the candidates must be interested in and have the possibility to invest time and energy into building the academy.

Members are chosen after an application process involving a scientific review process followed by interviews.

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.